The Problem With The Youth of Today

If you’re a follower of social media and you’re under the age of 40, you could browse through your feed on Facebook and easily be of the opinion that Labour are set to sweep to the largest electoral victory since Kim Jung-Un last stood for party leader.  It’s both an understandable and equally misleading perception.  The explanation is neither especially complex, nor is it in any way unknown.  Younger people are historically and presently far more likely to consider themselves liberal and socially progressive.  This combines with the fact that almost all younger people are active users of social media whereas the percentage of users decreases and then tapers off as you climb the age-scale. The result is an appearance that the overwhelming majority of your friends and acquaintances are Labour supporting liberals when you look at your Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Young people are not all the same.  We were all young once after all.  Yet from all backgrounds, all areas and demographics younger people tend to share something in common.  A natural aversion to the opinions of their elders.  Youthful rebellion you might say, a natural cynicism that the ‘old ways’ are outdated and that the youth are the bold new future.  Young people have energy, drive and an unwavering belief that they are going to conquer the World.  It’s why when we are young we dream of being astronauts, pilots, doctors, journalists or activists.  Not civil servants, chartered accounts or carpet fitters.  Parents among us may question the existence of that drive as they watch their offspring spend hours on the PlayStation, commenting on social media and singularly failing to tidy their room.  But the drive I speak of is one of belief.  Young people have little money, they have no positions of power or influence and they often remain dependent on their parents or guardians long past the age of 18.  In the absence of any actual discernible authority they turn to the one avenue where they are equal, the field of online opinion.  Young people are more likely to support and believe in all the things their parents traditionally didn’t such as gay marriage, votes for 16 year old’s, no war in general, positive action against climate change etc.  These positions are generally more likely to take root and find kindred spirits in the left wing of politics in the UK. Certainly there are Tories who support all these things, but the law of averages would suggest that a young liberal ‘believer’ is likely to find more in common with the views of Jeremy Corbyn than Theresa May.  Accordingly, young people identify with Labour and seeing as they often inexplicably feel the need to tell the World they’ve just got on a bus or had an especially tasty sandwich somewhere, they sure as hell want everyone to know that they are ‘Backing Corbyn!’.

It should be noted at this point that there is one minor caveat to all this.  Namely that most of paragraph two above is complete bollocks.  It’s not untrue or inaccurate per-say, but as is so often the case the appearance is entirely deceptive in relation to the truth. There isn’t a single major political agenda in this country that is exclusively supported by the young.  You are as likely to find a liberal, progressive revolutionary in a nursing home as you are in a Starbucks.  It’s just that the older generation lack both the modern platforms to share their beliefs and perhaps the vanity that requires one to insist on doing so.  Right wing, older, white males have been responsible for many atrocious decisions throughout history.  But it was not the disenfranchised young (alone) who abolished slavery, gave women the vote or spoke out against the rise of Fascism in the 1930’s.  It was an entire cross section of people.  Human beings are either liberal or they are not; they are either compassionate or they are not; they either believe in equality or they do not. Being 18 makes you no less likely to be intolerant than being 70 makes you likely to enjoy playing dominoes.  The fact remains though, backed up by extensive historical precedent, that young people are unlikely to vote Conservative.  Despite the reduced credibility of polling data in recent years, all information points to the fact that if a person under the age of 30 votes, they vote Labour, Lib Dem, Green or for a Nationalist party (SNP, Plaid etc.)  Conversely, those over the age of 60 are far more likely to vote Conservative.  Do people get more right wing as they get older?  That has always seemed more platitude than factual reality, but it remains the de-facto explanation for this voting trend.

For many years now though, this huge lack of support in a sizable chuck of the UK demographic has not worried the Conservative part in the slightest.  And the reason why is the worst kept secret on election day.  Younger people don’t vote.  It’s true, they don’t. At the 2015 General Election, people aged 18-29 were the most likely group to support Labour of any age group, yet they were also the age group that cast the fewest votes. Female voters aged 18-29 cast twice as many votes for Labour as they did for Conservative.  Remember this is an election Labour generally did very badly in, yet if 18-29 year old women were the only voters they’d have swept to a huge majority.  The conservative party has for many years not concerned itself overly with winning over the hearts and minds of the younger generation because they simply don’t need to.  The importance of the voting intentions of twenty-something’s has historically mattered about as much as the voting intentions of the UK cat population.  The result of this is political parties need to win over three to five 18-29 year old’s to their cause for every single 60+ year old.  Simply because for every 25 year old who gets on board with your ideals, only a handful of them will back that up with a vote whereas a 60 year old won over is more than likely a guaranteed vote right there.  This is a hugely impractical imbalance, so political parties have simply ignored younger voters and focused on the older generations.  When you hear the media talk about the youth of this country feeling abandoned and disenfranchised, this is what they are referring to.  It is why the Green Party and Liberal Democrats have always failed to gain a firm foothold in UK politics. Their core support lies in that pesky 18-29 bracket.

There is of course a gross contradiction to this.  Younger people should take the most interest in the outcome of an election out of any age group.  They may not have the tax liability of a 50 year old business owner or concerns of a pensioner who struggles to make ends meet.  But younger people have one overwhelming stake in the future of this country.  They’re going to live in it for longer than anyone else!  The UK of 2052 is being built as we speak, the foundations have already been laid.  Decisions made in this decade about the NHS, pensions, foreign policy and national debt will impact directly on our lives 35 years from now and beyond.  If you don’t believe that, lets briefly go back to the early-eighties.  Policy decisions made then that directly impact our lives now include:

• Deregulation of the banking industry to allow investment banks to use the funds and holdings of their retail arms to finance deals.
• The beginning of the process to privatize UK nationalized industry.
• The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan which lead to the US both arming and training the Mujaheddin (including one Osama Bin-Laden).
• Lethal injection is introduced in the USA as a form of execution, as it is believed to be entirely ‘humane’.

All of these decisions directly influence our lives in the World today.  If you do not believe that who you vote for on June 8th won’t impact directly on your life in 2053 then you are a fool.  One of the primary objections of the younger generation of the UK in regards the Brexit vote was that the generations who voted to leave were the very generations who would not have to live through the consequences of that decision. Although a somewhat macabre point, it was not entirely without merit.  Of course everyone should vote with their beliefs.  If you were a 104 year old who really didn’t believe the EU was something we should be a part of then you had to vote leave.  But it would be an act of gross selfishness if you based that decision solely on how you felt things have gone so far rather than what you think the best choice for the future would be.

As a population in general we are a perennially selfish bunch.  We do not prioritize the long term when voting.  We don’t tend to actually base our voting decision primarily on social justice or equality.  We tend to base it on tax.  We are ultimately a rather mercenary bunch.  We look at the party that will leave the most money in our pocket after the taxman has taken their slice.  That has been the core of the Conservative election strategy since time began.  And it has been both the key to their success and the root of Labour’s downfall over the years.  This shouldn’t matter to young people at all. University students pay no tax, those out of work (of which those under 29 are the most likely to be unemployed) don’t have that worry either.  Corporation tax rates or pension contributions impact the least on the younger generation. So if they don’t care about those things they should sweep to the election booths en-masse and support Labour because of it’s support of the NHS if for nothing else.

But will they? The polls suggest that Labour is closing fast on the Conservatives and that a Tory victory is no longer assured.  But this is all meaningless for two reasons.  One, pre-election polling has been thoroughly discredited in the past few years.  But also, there is a huge difference between who people say they will vote for when they’re phone up or stopped on the street and whether or not they actually get on their feet and head down to a polling station on June 8th.  What will happen next week?

The answer to that depends where you look for your information:

Ask Facebook – Massive Labour victory

Ask the polls – Marginal Tory victory

Ask history – Big Tory victory

Ask young people – No idea, they didn’t cast any votes in this poll.

 

Jeremy Corbyn and the brick wall

There is a rather common theme when it comes to the mainstream media’s reporting of Jeremy Corbyn’s chances at the upcoming General Election.  In one word it seems to be ‘unelectable’. It’s a rather morose approach in my own humble opinion.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s on the money.  He’s standing for election and I would rate his chances of being our next PM somewhere south of bloody awful.  But the word does seem to evoke a certain ‘in any circumstances’ tone to it.  That is to say he could come out and offer an identical manifesto to the Conservative Party, who are reported to be ‘quite electable’ but it wouldn’t matter because Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable.  To give it some scale and context, I assume we can all agree that Piers Morgan is unelectable as PM?  The reasons are myriad.  But largely they centre around him being just so terribly awful in every way.  Jeremy Corbyn is many things, and that in itself is unremarkable.  Even the most underachieving dullard is still many things.  But, and I am open to correction on this, I don’t believe any of his facets are considered especially horrific?  He’s shook hands with a few questionable people over the years, perhaps tended towards simply being a reactionary for the sake of it at times and has made the odd claim and promise in the past that were the luxury of a man who never truly thought he’d be in the position he’s in now.  Nationalize this, legalize that, reverse those etc.  Some of his supposed faults or errors have been traipsed out quite extensively to his supposed detriment.  But let’s be honest, Tony Blair was accused of war-mongering, genocide and deception on an Orwellian scale.  Margaret Thatcher was accused of destroying communities and entire ways of life with a speed and efficiency akin to Blitzkrieg.  These criticisms may be harsh for some, but even with these accusations leveled against them they both swept to election victories one after another.  Yet Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable? Why?

Well, it’s not his fault actually.  It’s not Labour’s either.  It’s not down to Blairites, the unions, it certainly isn’t down to how amazing the current government are.  It is in fact all your fault. Yes, your fault.  No, not ‘your’ as in society as a whole so it’s not really you personally.  It’s your fault.  What’s your name? Dave?  Yes, its’s your fault Dave.

If Corbyn isn’t Piers Morgan, then we agree he’s not unelectable because of himself personally.  Regardless of your politics, if you think Corbyn is personally unelectable but you think May, Farron or Farage are the re-incarnation of Abraham Lincoln then I just don’t know what to say.  If you follow heavyweight boxing then we are living in an age where our current political leaders occupy about the same status in the Pantheon of politicians that Tyson Fury does in the Boxing Hall of Fame.  So the problem must be with his policies? And you’re right, it is.  They’re wonderful.  They’re inclusive, comprehensive, radical and in terms of implementation perfectly achievable.  Now before you give up on this blog that was so inspiringly promising up to now because you think this is turning into an advert for Labour, let me take just one moment longer of your time.  Try to find a part of the Labour Manifesto that you don’t like or agree with. You can go read it here yourself, but I’ll gladly summarize the key points below.

More money for the NHS

More money for schools

No more tuition fees at universities

A reversal of cuts to disability benefits (over 50% of which when challenged are ruled unfair)

More council houses and affordable housing

Rail, water, power and Royal Mail put back into public ownership.

What’s not to like?  I doubt there’s a policy there that when put to a public poll asking “Do you support this?” would get less than 80% in favour, I really don’t.  But you know all this don’t you?  Apart from a very small number of Tories on Jeremy Hunt’s Facebook friends list, no-one really wants to fully privatise the NHS.  Everyone agrees a school education is a fundamental right and our schools could be a bit better.  Find me anyone who thought privatising Royal Mail was a good idea and I’ll introduce you to them, you’ll be talking to the CEO of Royal Mail.  So what’s the catch?  Yes of course it’s the cost. It’s all going to be paid for by taxing the rich a little bit more, making businesses cough up an extra slice of their profits and the other £10 billion will be found by just generally hanging hedge fund managers by the ankle and shaking them a bit.

The political logic is relatively sound, none of the people who will be hit in their tax bill are exactly in Labour’s core demographic and collectively they only number about one million people so let’s just let them ‘take one for the team’ whilst we all rattle on about how important the NHS is and how appallingly terrible rich people are.  On paper, the funding for all these vast expansions of government work balance up.  Increase this tax and that one will equal X amount extra revenue.  The Labour maths is solid. Unfortunately it also has no basis in reality.  If the rich currently pay X billion in tax, you could double or treble their tax liability and promise to build 3000 new state of the art schools and hospitals on Mars. You’d still get X billion tax off the rich and not a penny more. How do you think they became rich in the first place? By not paying more money for the same product for no reason that benefits them.  Their kids go to Harrow and they have their emergency BUPA membership card in their wallet. The promise to hire two new teachers at the local comprehensive and reduce waiting times for hip operations at the Leicester Royal Infirmary is no more going to pull on their heart strings than threatening to cut Greek and Latin from their child’s school syllabus would with you. And yet despite appearances this is not ‘rich people bashing’ from me.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with being wealthy or successful.  Nelson Mandela, Charles Dickens and Albert Einstein all died fabulously wealthy men yet I’m reliably informed they all contributed rather a lot to society.  The rich became rich by knowing the value of money (in the literal, not spiritual sense). The rich stay rich by not giving it away will-nilly. Again, that’s not rich bashing. Let’s be honest, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg will donate more money to charity this year either directly or through foundations they champion than most small countries give as overseas aid. The sums they channel into medical research, poverty reduction and education dwarfs what Comic Relief nobly coughs up every two years.  And that’s an entire nation reaching into their pocket and drunk texting a fiver! Whether or not their motivation is kindness and empathy or something more cynical, frankly who cares?  I assure you the recipients of their charity don’t.  Rich people give money to charity and most of them pay some tax (deciding between genuine tax efficiency and overt tax avoidance is a conversation for another time).  What they object to is paying more than they fell (rightly or wrongly) they should. Acknowledging that the government needs more money to get things done but only asking one segment of society to pay for it is, by the strict definition of the word, unfair. It just is.  If you disagree with that you may have a legitimate political standpoint, but you have still failed to grasp the meaning of fair.  It may be an injustice that many feel is a small price to pay for the vast improvements in the quality of life of many it would facilitate, but it remains unfair.

If Labour’s manifesto intentions were actually implemented you would see the rich become a hell of a lot more tax efficient and suddenly the number of people who claim to earn more than £120k per year would seem to be a lot less than it was before, for no obvious reason!  A Labour government would simply not be able to raise the money it has laid out because most of that money would simply vanish into Limited companies, luxury purchases and tiny banks on a lovely beach in the Caymans.  So when the Tories say Labour’s figures don’t add up, and they refer to a budgeting ‘black hole’ they’re right. They can’t point directly to it because black holes suck everything in, including light.  So you can’t actually see them.

None of this of course however, answers the question as to why Jeremy Corbyn is unlectable.  Poking holes in political pledges never stopped leaders getting elected, just ask Nick Clegg.  I haven’t read the Tory manifesto cover to cover but they’ve made it clear they want to cut taxes yet claim they won’t cut spending, so I don’t think we’ll need the calculator for that one.  Despite this they’re allegedly going to sweep to an electoral victory on a par with the majority Mugabe gets in a Zanu PF leadership race.  So May is electable somehow?  Very bloody electable! Un-unelectable even!

Neither have we answered why all of this is your fault (Dave!)

The two are intrinsically linked.  We all love the NHS and boast about it to American friends. We want our schools to be temples to education and our universities accessible to all.  We wants a state pension to look after us so we don’t have to work till 80 and know that granny will have a care home to go into that hasn’t featured on Panorama.  We want trains that have 9 standard carriages and one first class carriage at rush hour instead of six and four and we want companies we buy essential services off to be accountable when they’re rubbish.  But please, oh pretty please, if it’s at all possible is there any way that someone else, anyone else, doesn’t matter who as long as it’s not me, can pay for all this?  Because I believe passionately in all of that stuff you just mentioned, but I’m really enjoying watching House of Cards on Netflix at the moment and if I’m suddenly £7-£10 worse off a month I know the other half will make me cancel my subscription.  I’ve not even started on Breaking Bad yet!

We are all fundamentally, deeply and without doubt selfish.  You stop anyone on the street and they’ll tell you how important schools are, their priorities are health, education, immigration.  They want it all sorted out,  But when you get into that voting booth, no-one is looking. Suddenly you realise you only just managed to convince the wife to let you have BT Sport 12 months ago and the contract’s up for renewal, you want the Samsung Galaxy S9 Super-Edge but to get the handset free you need to take out the £44 per month contract, and the credit card interest free period ran out last month too. So of course you vote Tory.  Yes they’ll privatise the NHS department by department, sell off schools to ‘learning partners’ and with those savings give you a few pounds back and give millions in tax cuts to those who need it most, Goldman Sachs.  And you know what? That’s fine.  Because that’s democracy for you.  You don’t have to justify who you vote for. You don’t have to have your decision subjected to some morality test before it’s allowed to go through.  If when no-one is looking the most important thing to you is money, don’t feel bad.  The rich are exactly the same.  Because fundamentally we are all the same. We’re selfish. Its’s not a good thing, but Charles Darwin would explain to you it’s relatively understandable and can be explained without resorting to morality.  But the consequence of that selfishness is real, palpable and on your doorstep.

We could have absolutely everything we want.  We could have nationalised industries that actually work and deliver great service at a lower prices. We could have an NHS that’s well staffed and fully resourced with patient needs its only concern.  We could have schools with class sizes below 20 providing school trips to here there and everywhere. You could then go to Oxbridge for free, if you get good enough grades at your excellent comprehensive school, get a degree and go out and tke your pick from the many jobs available.  During your career if you lose your job the state could make sure you have enough money to make ends meet for as long as you need.  And when you retire at 65 you could get a generous pension that will allow you to genuinely enjoy the last 70 years of your life (people will live to 150 because the NHS is so excellent).  It wouldn’t be cheap.  But believe it or not it would’t cost you everything you earn, a kidney and a re-mortgage on the house.

There are roughly 32 million working adults in the UK, ranging from minimum wage part time shelf stackers through to equally part time hedge fund managers on seven figure salaries .  Purely for illustration, if everyone bore the tax burden equally, an extra £5 per week from every working adult would raise (during one five-year parliament) £41.6 billion extra tax revenue.  Asking the top half of earners to pay either an extra £2.50p or £5 depending on how much more they earned would raise a further £10.5 billion on top of that.  For the extra cost of two Costa coffees per week if you’re on average pay or the cost one short London taxi ride for the higher earners the state would be roughly £52 billion better off.  Which co-incidentally is about the same amount the Labour party needs to pay for everything it’s promised.

That £5 per week could pay for in five years: 25 new hospitals (and) 250 new schools (and) 500 miles of motorway (and) 3500 large wind turbines (and) 100’000 new council houses… and leave change to spare (let’s give the MP’s a pay rise!)

But you won’t vote for a party that proposes that.  Because you like Costa Latte’s and you prefer taxis to walking don’t you?

Jeremy Corbyn wants to improve the life of most British people.  Not everyone, but most, and crucially he wants to give help to those who actually need it. But the Tories, a large portion of the media, and pretty much anyone you get chatting to down to the pub thinks everyone is going to have to pay for it.  So no-one will vote for him.  He’s unelectable… And it’s your fault, Dave!

 

Epilogue

In conclusion, I am a realist.  I am both aware that to propose tax rises for everyone is electoral suicide and to be a politician is to be above all else, a pragmatist.  I do not judge Jeremy Corbyn for retreating to the safety of taxing the rich and leaving the wallet of the general public untouched.  Nor do I judge the public for their selfishness.  I talk about £5 per week as if it is nothing but of course to some it may be too much.  Everyone has to run out of money at some point and far too many in this country already live right on the line.

But we do face a series of undeniable truths.  People live longer; more people go to university and therefore delay entering the tax system by a number of years; advances in technology have vastly increased the cost of medical care compared to when the NHS was created; demand for the NHS continues to increase at a faster rate than population increase;  the demand on social services continues to rise yet funding is continuously cut. These are not political points, they are facts.

These trends will continue.  As they do, eventually the NHS, Social Services and state pension system will simply run out of money and the choice will be privatization or nothing.  Some people do not think that is a bad thing, just look at Republicans in America. But if you do think these things are bad.  You will at some point have to pay more as a percentage in tax than you do now.  You quite simply will have no alternative.

It will cost you less to re-invest in schools, hospitals and public services now than it will cost to rescue them in 10-20 years time.  If you continue to vote for parties that offer tax cuts or at least offer not to raise taxes, then you are undeniably voting for the future privatization of the all major public services.