After ‘choosing hope over fear’, naive young voters must have a harsh lesson in political reality
Millennial mouthpieces on social media rouse the tribe with talk of reclaiming their future and how dreadfully they have been let down by older generations
“RESPECT your youngers,” tweeted pop star Lily Allen after the shock election result driven by a high youth turnout.
But have we come to respect the youngers and their opinions too much? Recent years have involved increasing youth worship in politics.
Come election time, TV producers fall over themselves to put together panels of young people to offer up vacuities about “choosing hope over fear” and other quotes they may have spotted on Instagram.
Grey-beard presenters nod deferentially at every complaint made by the youthful contributors, however inane or ill-informed (the passion of youth requires no substantiation).
Millennial mouthpieces on social media rouse the tribe with talk of reclaiming their future and how dreadfully they have been let down by older generations.
Then there are the politicians engaging in something akin to dad dancing, loosening the tie to get down with the kids. Ed Miliband making a midnight visit to be interviewed by Russell Brand, Jeremy Corbyn shooting the breeze with a grime artist, Theresa May grimacing her way through a Snapchat interview.
You’ve got to engage with the young, see, however unstatesmanlike the process.
And since Thursday, people have been falling over themselves to congratulate the younger among us for doing their democratic duty; a five-minute detour to the polling station given the same weight as going over the top at Ypres.
Young people posted selfies taken after the event and wore stickers saying “I voted!” Should they get lollipops, too?
Yes, an increase in turnout at any age is to be welcomed. Only 43 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds voted in 2015.
Although we are yet to see the hard data, the “youthquake” this time was doubtless real. And, of course, many people born post-1990 are spectacularly well informed, public spirited, energetic and the rest.
Yet what is galling is the veneration of youthful opinion regardless of the sense it makes; this growing idea that being under 25 confers some special wisdom that the rest of us might benefit from.
The argument goes that because they have more decades ahead, they are the best judges of how that future might be shaped (hence the suggestion that oldies should have refrained from voting in the EU referendum because they’ll be dead soon).
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In recent days we have heard that The Youth Has Spoken, with the implication that we should sit up and listen.
But should we? The election revealed the judgment of many young voters to be as we might expect of those with relatively limited experience: Hopelessly naive.
They turned out in their droves for a man who became a kind of millennials’ prophet, promising to lead them out of the badlands of austerity and towards a future where everything is nicer, cheaper or, indeed, free. They voted for a man who would have endangered our economy, the whisper of whose name can send the Pound on a swan-dive. There is no wisdom here, no great lesson to be learnt, just the insight that many young people rather like being offered free stuff.
It has been suggested the great turnout of the youth vote is an argument for lowering the voting age to 16. Given who they voted for en masse, I would say it’s an argument for raising it to at least 21.
This is not to suggest that the young have no cause to desire real change. Many have it hard:
Qualifications that get you nowhere, work that is tenuous, homes that are impossible to afford. Serious action on these fronts would be welcome.
Yet the passionate sense of grievance — that theirs is a generation uniquely betrayed by the generations above — should not simply be “listened to” as though it were true, it must be robustly challenged.
The phrase “intergenerational unfairness” has a lot to answer for, conjuring a picture of the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers scrabbling up the ladder of opportunity and booting those below in the face.
Those older generations simply took whatever chances were on offer, from £50,000 family homes to university grants. This does not make them the deniers of opportunity for young people today.
What should be challenged too is the youthful expectation of a free lunch. For instance, many 18 to 24-year-olds — reared on the language of rights — believe it their right to receive a free university education.
Instead of congratulations for backing wishlist politics, young people must be told the reality that public resources are finite. Wishing for a better world is nothing to be derided. But when it comes to running our country, we have a duty not to kowtow to youthful dreaming but to confront some of the myths that underpin it.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Socialism is a proven disaster. These might not make for inspiring
Facebook posts but they have the virtue of being the truth.
The only insight from the vote is that young people like free stuff.
© The Times/News Syndication