Yesterday’s Observer had a piece on future stars from the youth wings of the three main parties: Liberal Youth, Conservative Future and Young Labour.
The young people from all the parties are an inspired and inspiring bunch, but it’s striking from the magazine article’s photos that Liberal Youth are the huggiest and most diverse. Ranging from “crisp-shirted” to “he of the elongated fringe”, the Liberal Youth contingent are a mixture of ages and backgrounds. Sadly the Liberal Youth photo only made it into the print edition (magazine front page, no less) so the online version features the Young Labour photo instead.
Here’s the Observer’s take on Liberal Youth:
The party for the politically precocious, Liberal Youth is the only organisation that doesn’t operate a minimum age for membership (Young Labour and Conservative Future are for over-15s). The 12-year-old Claire Boad, who would like to juggle a modelling career with becoming the first female Lib Dem prime minister, is by no means the youngest. Her father – wearing a coalition badge that says: “We may be together, but we’re in separate beds” – tells me that her younger brother Simon, eight, could teach me a thing or two about politics.
Maelo Manning, also 12, and wearing trainers with the slogan “I ❤ cupcakes”, describes herself as a “child feminist” and has 120,000 followers at Libdemchild.com. She wants to study PPE at university, followed by a masters, then a career in ethical investment banking. “But I might drop economics,” she tells me matter-of-factly.
The other parties goad them about their open-door policy (“It’s really scraping the barrel getting the 12-year-olds in!”), but the Lib Dems banter back. “We’re definitely the weirdest party,” laughs 15-year-old Matt Downey from Cambridge – he of the elongated fringe – “and you get a lot of outcasts, a lot of different, mad opinions. We have a laugh with it.” Noticeably this is the only group that isn’t entirely white.
Liberal Youth has managed to pilfer from Labour and the Tories. Amanda Garoes-Hill, a 19-year-old raised in Bradford in a lone-parent family, ditched Labour after it abolished the 10p tax rate: “It made me realise they did not represent the disadvantaged.” Then there’s Harry Matthews, a crisp-shirted university student who aced his Eton entrance interview after he gave a speech in praise of Iain Duncan Smith. In 2010, after watching Nick Clegg’s live pre-election appeal on TV, he had an “identity crisis” and switched parties: “I was shocked. I just thought: ‘I agree with a lot of this.'”
The other kids call them fickle. “Oh, new, shiny Nick Clegg!” they tease, sounding like characters from The Inbetweeners. “It’s the new party that hasn’t been in power for 70 years!”
How do they feel now that their leader’s golden hour is over? “We were caught between a rock and hard place when the coalition was elected, and whatever we had done would have been wrong,” says Harry, shrugging.
Read the full piece (and see if you can spot a future Prime Minister) here.
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11 Comments
I think what the journalist meant to write is that Maelo Manning has 120 followers on Twitter using the handle Libdemchild, not 120,000!
I think Maelo Manning has a great blog and I would be fascinated to see her progress. I like her ambition to get into ethical investment banking.
I agree with Geoffrey – Maelo Manning can teach many older bloggers a thing or two about making an argument rather than just a rant. I was very impressed both times I heard her speak at Conference.
And yes, I think the curse of the Grauniad has clearly struck again regarding her number of followers!
Frankly if any of them – red, yellow or blue – end up in power then it will be a bad thing. We need far fewer politicians from inside the politics bubble and more from outside.
“fewer politicians from inside the politics bubble”
what does this mean? politicians who know and care nothing about politics?
Great, how about more bankers from outside the banking bubble too, more teachers from outside the teaching bubble, more doctors from outside the doctoring bubble!
I knew there would be at least one commenter coming here and talking down passionate young people who care about the future of this country. We should be happy that all of them – not just the members from Liberal Youth – are interested in politics and aren’t afraid to speak out!
I wasn’t talking down new talent – but I think that talent would be better placed if it cleared off and spent it’s 20 and early 30 in Engineering. Or Nursing. Or Teaching. Or whatever. To have their corners knocked off a little bit and to learn one of the nations major industries from a practical standpoint.
@CC
I could understand if you really meant society would be the better for it if politicians more regularly escaped the hermetically-sealed world of westminster to gain a wider perspective, but to reverse that logic and suggest it’d be better if politicians were less able to negotiate the corridors of power on the one hand and that all politicians should be cut from the same cloth on the other strikes me as bizarre.
Nevertheless I cannot disagree strongly enough that prior experience of another area of life followed by droning on about former glories is in any way as advantageous to contemporary debate as maintaining links with the outside world and continually updating ones experience to learn about latest developments and show continual personal growth.
However it’s important to highlight the difference so early bloomers don’t fall into the trap of becoming self-satisfied and arrogant. Ignorance, lack of plurality and complacency are three different charges which could fairly be directed at many of the current parliamentary membership. It doesn’t help anyone to conflate or misidentify these different problems.
We want savvy operators capable of bringing a variety of relevant skill sets to work in combination.
I wish these guys well and I’m sure they are all very talented. I am quite sure that none of them will share the same fate as the stars of that famous 1960s Time Magazine “Britain’s future leaders” article, which is renowned for, among other things, saying that Hugh Dykes would be Prime Minister.
@ CC and Oranjepan
It seems these kids largely have the right idea anyway. Take this quote from the Observer article:
“The kids are keen to emphasise the words “one day”. David Cameron may be the youngest prime minister in Britain for 200 years, but there is apparently nothing cool about being a “career politician”. “You’ve got to be able to bring some life experience to politics,” one of them says.”
This Amanda sounds like she has great Promise!