Britain lacks a party of the young

Last week, Britain went to the polls. Labour’s Gotterdammerung saw red blood spilt throughout the country, and a turquoise tide sweeping the land.

In some respects this reflects a European-wide pattern of rising populism. But in Britain, there is a massive, visible difference. Our politics, even our anti-establishment politics, is old. Nigel Farage is 62, Starmer is 63. Compare this to populist parties like National Rally in France, whose leader, Jordan Bardella, is only 30 years old. He not only leads the largest political party in France, but is also the chairman of the Patriots for Europe group in the European parliament, taking a leading role in the nationalist movement within the EU itself. It’s not just the leadership of European populist parties that is youthful — on the continent, nationalist movements typically do as well or even better with younger voters than with the older generation. 

Meanwhile in Britain, young people still overwhelmingly vote for parties of the left. Across the right and centre, there is a sense that the agenda is driven by older voters and leaders, with major concerns of young voters seen in other countries — jobs, housing and welfare reform — largely off the agenda. 

What makes this all the stranger is that of all the countries in Europe, young Britons have the most reason for intergenerational rage and resentment. There is a housing crisis across the continent but our young people pay the most, and for some of the smallest average floorspace in Europe. And if youth unemployment is higher elsewhere, in Britain the true numbers are obscured by the explosion of hidden unemployment in the form of precarious work, low value education, and economic inactivity. Unlike most Europeans, our young people have to pay for their university places by going into debt, giving graduates an effective marginal tax rate higher than their parents and grandparents. Added to this our tax-funded, defined-benefit, inflation-proofed state pension further picks the pockets of the younger generation for the benefit of the old.

So where is the political movement promising to give young people a job and a home? In Ireland far left Sinn Fein has won over young people by campaigning on housing, as has the far right VPP in the Netherlands. Whilst Reform is the most popular party in the polls, its support is inversely proportioned with age. In the most recent YouGov poll, 35% of over 65s, 31% of 50-64 year olds back the turquoise titan. Yet amongst 25-49 year olds, this drops precipitously to only 18%. Meanwhile, a mere 7% of 18-24 year olds plan to back Reform in a general election. 

There is a familiar story that the young are simply too woke, too progressive, too inclusive and socially conscious to ever back a party of the nationalist right. Yet as the European examples amply demonstrate, this is no law of generational physics. Young people in the Netherlands, France and Italy are not inherently more or less progressive than their English-speaking counterparts. 

Young people in the Netherlands, France and Italy are not inherently more or less progressive than their English-speaking counterparts

At present British populism has focused on a cultural allergy to progressivism or the alienating speed of social change present amongst older generations, as well as the anger of “left behind” regions from declining coastal towns to hollowed out towns and villages. It has struggled to appeal to younger voters in universities and urban centres, or to develop a narrative that speaks to the psychology of the young. 

Part of the problem is the long shadow of Toryism under which Reform, and its top leadership, continue to live. The very ferocity of denunciation which Reform dishes out to the Conservatives reflects a longstanding demographic of disappointed Tories frustrated over Brexit, aggravated by the failure to cut back the state, and sick and tired of political correctness. Typically, Farage’s own political journey began with a departure from the Conservative Party over John Major’s signing of the Maastricht Treaty. The sheer volume of Tory members, voters and former MPs now flooding into Reform is the product of a political realignment, yet at the same time has had precisely the effect of slowing that realignment.

As European populists demonstrate, there is a compelling story to tell about a welfare system that punishes young workers, the ferocious competition for housing and work imposed by mass migration, and the condescension of identitarian politics

This framing has appealed to older voters, who look back on the 80s with fondness, but has done little to win over younger voters. As European populists demonstrate, there is a compelling story to tell about a welfare system that punishes young workers, the ferocious competition for housing and work imposed by mass migration, and the condescension of identitarian politics. More than merely the trick of fielding younger leaders, these movements have been effective at sourcing actual political talent, and crafting carefully polished messages delivered via social media. 

For now, most British political parties have simply failed to engage with or define the socioeconomic interests of younger generations. It’s easy to dismiss younger voters as not turning up, less numerous and settled than pensioners and the middle aged. But young people aren’t just the voters of the future, they’re also the most energised and important element of political campaigning, and demographic that can swing elections at crucial moments. When the Lib Dems promised free tuition in 2010, they gained enough new votes to enter government. 

And there is an exception. One political party is making the running with younger voters, and raking in huge numbers of angry youngsters. 16 years after the Lib Dems promised free university, the Green party, making the same promise, is gaining massive support amongst younger voters. At the beginning of last year 20% of 18-24 year olds backed the party. Today, nearly half of under 25s are supporting the Greens. 

Until Polanski and the Greens came on the scene, the central figure of the British far left had been Jeremy Corbyn, a man in his 70s, whose politics were stuck in the industrial disputes of half a century ago. An attempt to revive the energy of Momentum briefly flared with the founding of Your Party, before it descended into predictable infighting. The Greens are a different beast, opportunistic and vibes-based, they’ve reinvented themselves as a red-green progressive alliance, ditched the wobbly dual leader system, and gone from harmless single-issue eccentrics to an electorally lethal force threatening Labour’s remaining strongholds. 

Their sudden success is as much as anything to do with the fact that the Greens are speaking directly to younger voters, telling a story of climate catastrophe, endangered social progress and corporate overlordship in which young people are the chief heroes and protagonists, punishing the sins of older generations. Polanski himself, although middle aged and eccentric, is far more rooted in the culture and experiences of young people than other political leaders. His precarious odd-jobing career looks bizarre to older voters, but all too familiar for young people struggling their way through a chaotic jobs market. Even his often disastrous social media addiction is a point of connection with terminally online zoomers.

A war on landlords is a welcome bit of schadenfreude for Generation Rent, and so too is a wealth tax for the asset-starved youth

Whilst the Green agenda may be economically illiterate and disastrous for young people in practice, the message of their policy is profoundly appealing. A war on landlords is a welcome bit of schadenfreude for Generation Rent, and so too is a wealth tax for the asset-starved youth. The promised 150,000 social houses a year is a dramatic opening bid for young people dreaming of a house, and other political parties have failed to point out that under the current system those houses won’t be going to young people in work, and under Green party policy could go to refugees and migrants instead. 

The biggest secret to their appeal is that they are relatively unchallenged. The institutional dominance of progressivism in schools and universities, something 14 years of conservative rule has left untouched, has no small part to play. But even in the wider culture, the Greens are the only game in town. Young people’s votes have gone uncourted for decades, and are now flowing towards the first political movement to bother showing a serious interest, and flashing a bit of hypothetical cash. 

Addressing the concerns of the young is about much more than better marketing. There is strong evidence that millennials are the first generation to become more progressive with age, a reality that reflects not only “the great awokening”, but the unprecedented precarity in jobs and housing faced by those coming of age during the credit crunch and the housing crisis. The political right has long shown contempt for the arts and humanities, for literary journals and academic forums, yet these “soft” spaces are precisely where cultural and moral norms are formed, and how social change begins. The dreams and hopes of the young, their romanticism, creativity and search for meaning, are punchlines for a greying Anglosphere conservatism.

At the same time, for younger generations, the milestones of homeownership, marriage, and children have been steadily pushed back or missed altogether. Combined with childrearing and educational philosophies that discourage psychological resilience, risk-taking, independent thought or confrontation, and foster dependence and learned helplessness, there is a widespread infantilisation of young adults. Here too the right is doubly unsympathetic, failing to see how the life chances of the young are crushed and limited by a welfare and economic structure vastly less advantageous than that enjoyed by their parents, even as home and education act to limit ambition and free thought.

Parties like the Greens at once offer the psychological security younger people have come to expect, and the economic security they now lack

Radical progressivism ultimately offers more of the same, but this fact gives it a dangerous appeal. Parties like the Greens at once offer the psychological security younger people have come to expect, and the economic security they now lack. Equally, it has made itself the sole channel for youthful anger against a political establishment that has failed them. Another part of the picture, ironically, is an appeal to identity and ethnic belonging — although not, of course, amongst white Englishmen. The Greens have fused a huge promised expansion of state aid in housing and welfare with a direct appeal to Muslim group loyalty, and in a country where half of Muslims are under 25, and make up 10% of school-aged children, this is just as much a youth movement as radical progressivism itself. Equally, the Greens are an anti-unionist movement, and run as a progressive nationalist party in Wales and Scotland, committed to a story of national liberation from the English oppressor, and the break up of the United Kingdom.

What all this tells us is that a vigorous political movement that appealed to British, Welsh, Scottish and English national identity, and made concrete policies on welfare, pensions, student loans and housing to the benefit of young people, has huge potential for growth amongst younger voters. Whilst often accused of being a nativist or identitarian movement, one of Reform’s chief weaknesses is its lack of fluency in the language of belonging and identity. It is powered and fuelled by strong regional and national sentiments, but struggles to link them with either the interests or imaginations of the young.

The race is on to win the hearts and minds of a new generation of Britons. Met with indifference or condescension by the political establishment, their futures betrayed and imperilled by older generations, they are in desperate need of a visionary political movement — and in real peril of being exploited by a cynical one.