Dear Nick,
This election had the promise of being the most significant for a generation. My generation. It should be an opportunity for a radical change in direction in the same way that the elections of 1945 and 1979 were for our grandparents and parents respectively. This seems to be lost on Labour and the Conservatives, who simply want to preserve the status quo.
You’re making an appeal to the youth vote. If you’re listening, we’ve got plenty to say.
Those of us in the eighteen-to-thirty age bracket have been collectively failed by the electoral system. We were afraid that this key moment to determine our future will pass us by, as mainstream politics sees us as the least important demographic in the electoral calculus. Then, suddenly, you started polling well among young people, and yesterday began talking to us directly. But we’ve got plenty to say too.
We are not simply the ‘youth vote’. We are a distinct cohort of people, born at a specific period in time with a unique and powerful set of historic pressures placed upon us.
We are quite literally the children of neoliberalism. We were nursed, schooled and socialised as Margaret Thatcher ripped up the prevailing cultural logics of the post-war settlement and Tony Blair consolidated and rebranded her revolution. We do not have an experience of social democracy, class solidarity or collective bargaining.
A return to an old-left politics or even its language would be alien to many under thirty. Our generation is as diverse in its political outlook as it is in its demographic makeup, but there is an opportunity here to unite under a progressive banner of clear and present need.
We face not one crisis, but intersecting layers of issues that have produced a society that is systematically failing the under thirties.
Our schools produce better results, but have forgotten the real purpose of education. The benefit system has become stigmatising for the disproportionate number of young people forced to use it, not a safety net for those in or at risk of poverty. Our economy is fragile, imbalanced and disproportionately rewards the highest earners leaving many working for peanuts throughout their twenties.
We have become a two-tier society with home ownership at the heart of financial security and the property ladder reserved largely for those with families are already on it. We come of age in communities that have become politicised and segregated in the fallout from the war on terror and we are culturalised by a media which heaps pressure on young women from every angle, while young men are portrayed as violent and purposeless.
On all of this, we urgently need action because our futures are being mortgaged for the convenience of the generations that have gone before. From higher education, to pensions, to the environment, to housing, to electoral reform, policy is being made now to defer the pain of difficult decisions and to ensure the continued prosperity of those who might not live to see the consequences.
This is why this election should be so important, because the way these issues are tackled now will define the sort of future we the generation under thirty will live through, bring our own children into and grow old in. Tinkering around the edges of neoliberal, free market consumerism will not cut it.
If we want to live in a good society, one that is sustainable, and financially and socially secure, we need to start building it now. Our problem is that Britain’s young people are demographically cut off from a political sphere that focuses on the most electorally significant group: middle-aged, middle-class, middle England.
The low turn-out in elections among under-thirties is not reflective of fecklessness and ambivalence, but because, quite literally, Westminster politics is not for us. When it does turn its monstrous head to the issues that concern us, the people it targets its solutions to are the parents in swing seats. This has been the failing of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. We don’t want sympathy from you and we don’t just want a vague promise of hope. We want a viable politics for the young and a new set of political alliances which place the interests of the under-thirties firmly at the core.
This means designing policies for our generation that help us directly, not simply allay the fears of our more electorally attractive parents. A politics of youth will get us so far, only to be outgrown and become irrelevant to our middle-aged selves. These are not youth issues, they will not diminish with age: they have a generational character. You can read here what we’ve got to say, Nick, so if you’re serious, let’s have a dialogue and some real change.
Best wishes,
Ben Little
* Ben Little is editor of Radical Future Politics for the Next Generation.
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7 Comments
“We are quite literally the children of neoliberalism. We were nursed, schooled and socialised as Margaret Thatcher ripped up the prevailing cultural logics of the post-war settlement and Tony Blair consolidated and rebranded her revolution. We do not have an experience of social democracy, class solidarity or collective bargaining.
A return to an old-left politics or even its language would be alien to many under thirty.”
for which read “We’re all idealist student lefties but are used to those working-class oiks not kicking up too much of a fuss. Can we have a socialism safe for Guardian readers without those smelly proles wanting anything out of it, please?”
The likes of Mandelson would probably agree so I suppose there’s a basis for a Lib-Lab coalition after all.
The unaffected or the uneffable? That reminds me of this piece from Jonathan Freedland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/15/economic-policy-banking
A recession is when a factory closes. A depression is when a newspaper closes.
Hi Parasite,
And then you have to wonder quite how this applies to modern politics. We don’t even have any large socialist parties any more. It’s all very well to label Labour as “left-wing” and the Tories as “right-wing”, but their policies don’t match up very closely to the traditional concepts. If you ask what they believe in – I’m not sure anybody even knows any more. For this election, both have delivered manifestos that are in large part a list of attempts to appeal to target demographics and special interest groups, most of which won’t be implemented even if they do get in. To somebody not familiar with the parties, that tells you nothing about who to support.
I broadly agree with what Ben says here, although I find it odd that he refers on the one had to the diversity of opinions amongst young people, and then later uses the word “we” as though he speaks on their behalf.
Nick Clegg has more than any other politician in recent times re-awakened political interest amongst young people. We notice it in Hackney local party where our membership has shot up and lots of young people are now getting involved.
I agree with Ben that the failure of neo-liberalism will probably change the face of our politics at youth level and throughout the party as a whole. When I joined the Young Liberals in the 1980s we were emphatically opposed to free market dogma. That seemed to change from around 2004 – 2007 when neo-liberalism appeared to be working; economic growth even in places like Africa seemed to suggest that maybe liberals of good will should support it.
With all the banking bailouts of 2008, and the repercussions still yet to be felt, I think that those days are over. The problem that politics faces from now on is that nothing seems to work anymore. The next government will have to raise taxes, reduce public spending, deal somehow with runaway global warming and deal with serious intractable problems in the middle east.
I am not sure how any generation will respond to that but the more of us who do, the better our chances are in meeting these challenges.
From the point of view of the Liberal Democrats, I am hoping that with a stronger critique of capitalism we can now re-energise the green wing of the party. We are already firmly committed to civil liberties, take a positive view of diversity, support changing the political system to make it less corrupt and more empowering, would like to see a far more equal society and advocate not to replace our Trident nuclear weapons like for like. It does not fit everyone’s agenda, but the biggest hurdle we have faced up until now was that not many people knew that is what we stood for.
This general election campaign has changed that, and if we get a hung Parliament then British politics will probably not be the same again.
I fall into this “youth” category, and I can never help but cringe whenever I hear any of this pretentious nonesense about “young people feel this or that, and WE are the organisation that speaks for them, so listen to us!”
As has been mentioned above, they use words like diversity of opinion, then rattle off on neoliberalism, thatcherism and a whole load of other left-wing bed bugs.
Treat young people just as anyone else, rather than listen to this self-serving patronising tripe.
(And for Westminster politics is not for us, read, we don’t like (ok, semi-)democratic politics, we would prefer to legislate without regard to the rest of the country, because, you know, we’re YOUNG!)
Dear Nick Clegg,
I attended your visit to “The Nags Head” in Malvern, Worcestershire. Today, 1st May 10.
I am only 12 years old, if I was old enough to vote, I would vote for you!
I am fully aware of how busy you are, but I really had hoped to meet you.
I stood right at the front, hoping to shake your hand, but you didn’t see me,
I then waited at the coach for you hoping to get your autograph.
I was absolutely gutted to find that you got in a car and left in a hurry.
I am writing this e-mail to you in the hope that you would be able to send me your autograph.
wishing you the best of luck in the election!
from a future loyal supporter, Kathryn Pratt