British politics is trapped in a vicious circle: young people don’t vote, and therefore politicians don’t develop policies specifically to win them over. So young people feel neglected and alienated … and then they don’t vote. The big exception to this is the Lib Dem tuition fee pledge – which convinced thousands of young people to back the party, only to see it promptly sacrificed to the gods of coalition. Imagine if David Cameron had recanted on protecting pensioner benefits, such as free TV licences and bus passes. It would have been a bloodbath – not least because old people also read newspapers, meaning the press acts as lobbyists on their behalf.
The voting figures for the last election show the huge gulf in democratic participation between old and young. Just 44% of 18-24-year-olds voted in the 2010 general election, according to Ipsos Mori, compared with 76% of over-65s. Contrast that with 1964, where turnout was almost identical among the youngest group – then aged 21-24 – of voters (76.4%) and the eldest (76.7%).
Because young people are less likely to give politicians a good hard kick in the ballots, they are overlooked when the pre-election sweeteners are handed out. In early February, I went to Facebook’s shiny new headquarters in Euston to watch the party leaders field questions on youth issues. The event almost made me feel sorry for Cameron. He was going into the lions’ den – well, a canteen with a Subbuteo table in it, but same difference – with very little in the way of red meat to offer the lions.
The audience of first-time voters (who all called him “David”) gave him a hard time. How could they sign up to a political party when they didn’t agree with all its policies? How could they feel represented when parliament is so white, male and middle-class? How could a group who spend their entire lives being told to behave themselves understand why everyone is allowed to bellow at each other at prime minister’s questions? “Sixteen-year-olds are deemed not able to vote, when 40-plus-year-olds are arguing in a place that’s supposed to make laws,” said one young woman. Cameron gave his usual polished performance, but – aside from 3m new apprenticeships – it was clear that he had an awful lot of sticks and very few carrots for anyone born after 1980.
The youth vote matters because young people do not just see themselves as old-people-in-waiting. No one under 30 looks at the pensioner bonds offered by George Osborne and thinks: “Well, if I just hang in there for 40 years, everything will be golden.” They instinctively feel that politics is a zero-sum game. Money spent on pensioner bonds means less help for workers in precarious employment. Allowing house prices to surge wildly makes those with an appreciating asset feel richer, but leaves stranded everyone in the poorly regulated private rental market or those in a dogfight for what little social housing remains.
Rick Edwards, the host of BBC3’s debate programme Free Speech, has a simple answer: young people need to vote. Every chapter of his book None of the Above ends with a simple entreaty to turn up at a polling station on 7 May. “If you care about punishing politicians for breaking promises – VOTE … If you think the war on drugs is failing, or that it just needs to be fought harder – VOTE … If you care about the people who live and work in our country – VOTE.”
The book is divided up into broad subjects and trends: climate change, benefits, the rise of Ukip, the perils of social media. My initial response was a slight sneer. Did I really have to read British Politics for Dummies? This sentiment had crumbled to dust by page 33 when Edwards outlined a Liberal Democrat policy that I had never heard before. Clearly, I am a dummy; we all are.
Well, except for Georgia Gould, whose new book Wasted was evidently conceived as “Chavs for young people” (it could have been called Yoof). The daughter of New Labour pollster Philip Gould admits she was “featuring on Labour Party leaflets before I could speak; I was waving a flag on the steps outside Downing Street in 1997, and by the time I was 15, I was travelling round the country to campaign for Labour”. This hothouse upbringing leads veteran campaigner Alan Barnard to warn her: “Never fall into the trap of thinking we are normal.”
Gould, now 28, has spent two years asking young people across the UK why they are not engaged with politics. In contrast to Edwards, whose no-nonsense book is designed to bludgeon some facts into young people, Gould is writing for her peers in the political world. How many “normal” under-25s will want to read what is essentially a thinktank pamphlet, complete with waterlogged prose about “empowered citizenship” and “turning mutuality into a mainstream agenda”?
Still, you can’t fault her enthusiasm. Gould has an unwavering belief in the power of politics to do good, and no fear of putting in the legwork. Anecdotes pinwheel across these pages, reminding me of Rosie the Doctor and Gareth the Frustrated IT worker from Ed Miliband’s party conference speech, but they are solid evidence that Gould has spoken to hundreds of activists, academics, entrepreneurs and dropouts. She is also fearsomely well-read in academic texts about predistribution.
As a result, her book offers a useful corrective to the myth that youngsters are all feckless, internet-addled layabouts who need to have the joints and tequila shots snatched from their hands and be sent on national service. The teenage murder rate has fallen sharply since 2007; teen pregnancy is also on a downward trajectory. At the same time, the old rites of passage – getting a job, buying a home and having a family – now happen later, and financial stability is harder to attain.
In keeping with current Labour orthodoxy, Gould identifies the problem as a lack of community spirit. If young people move between rented flats every few years, they will never feel like they “belong” to an area and work to improve it. In an increasingly secular society, places of worship are less likely to remind them of “a collective moral obligation”. And fewer young people vote along simple class lines any more: they grew up under aspirational New Labour, where the old leftwing shibboleths – the role of trade unions, the need for redistribution of wealth, a quasi-religious attitude to the NHS – were much less prominent.
Gould is broadly positive about the new communities made possible by the internet, in which young people are more likely to participate. However, these often centre on identity politics and address a specific concern (No More Page 3 or the New Era housing protests, for example) without attempting to place the problem within a broader structural analysis. Digital strategists complain that it has proved almost impossible for those who come to politics through a single facet of their identity to subsume themselves in a wider movement: good luck persuading that pro-choice activist to become a Labour party member.
Social media give campaigners unparalleled reach, but this often comes at the expense of strong relationships; it is easier to raise awareness of problems, but just as hard to tackle them. Internet activism has also given young people unrealistic expectations of the speed of change: in legislative terms, we have gone from civil partnerships to gay marriage at breakneck speed. But it still took nine years, and the earlier victory relied on decades of struggle by the gay rights movement – not a timescale that is easy to sell to a teenager who might expect a new iPhone every autumn. Gould’s answer to this is that we should not “try to push” young people “back into traditional collective identities, but to help them forge new communities that celebrate, promote and harness, rather than suppress their individuality”. I confess I have no idea what this means.
Sometimes Gould’s enthusiasm reaches levels normally found only in children’s TV presenters. She is wide-eyed about the sharing economy, for example, which allows young people “to embed community values into how they consume”. Funny, I thought it was creating unregulated markets where users are susceptible to sharp practices because they never truly own their products, and workers are invited to participate in a race to the bottom on wages and conditions. But then I’m an old square of 31. What do I know?
Nonetheless, I believe Georgia Gould – and what she represents, which is working hard and being nice to people – is a good thing. If young people can’t be naively optimistic about the future, where would we be?
Underlying her talk about “actualising potential”, there is an acknowledgment that re-engaging young people in politics will be a low-tech, old-fashioned process. We must encourage them to volunteer and give them responsibility when they do; teach citizenship better and encourage politicians to visit schools; make sure that young people feel that institutions are open to them. On the crusties’ side of the bargain, we must prove that politics has something to offer young people by creating jobs that pay a living wage and building more houses.
It would also really, really help if the idealistic young tykes started to vote.
• To order None of the Above for £6.39 (RRP £7.99) or Wasted for £11.99 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
