“We need to make a proper offer to young people”
The walking wounded survivors of the 2024 General Election, tended to utter this phrase almost like an incantation as they tried to absorb what had happened and demonstrate, that despite the rubble around them, they continued to exist.
Every single leadership candidate said it, including the defector and the winner.
To be honest almost every party has it’s own version of “must do more for young people” so much so it’s almost become cliché, but here’s the problem – precious few seem to mean in it.
Doing more for the younger generation shouldn’t be an aspirational political aim it should be a rock solid promise because the fact is it’s a necessity.
We are blithely heading towards a trap the kind which politics now is supposed to pre-empt and prepare us for, and historically hasn’t.
Under recent governments, certainly ours, and especially under this current one, we are actually seeing politics not just ignore the trap but make it worse.
We have an increasingly ageing population, living longer though requiring the lion’s share of health and social care, better off but feeling entitled to it, retired or slowing down the pace of life and yet requiring the younger generation to work hard, as they will tell you they did.
It’s not terrible that they think likes this. I am one. A decade away from retirement. Three decades plus of active working, paying taxes, building a pension. I’m incredibly fortunate, but have built up expectations for my old age.
The problem is my children just aren’t going to get the same deal. They can’t assume – as my parents did – that their lives will be more prosperous and a better standard than their own parents had.
This is not news; we all know this. And yet it’s hard to see what if anything we are going to do about it.
We aren’t having children as early or as many as we used to. The generations whose work and tax – which has ramped up and up – a larger number of the older generation will rely on will reduce in number.
We’ve actually made a bad situation worse. Tax take hasn’t funded all we expect of the state for decades, leading to ballooning borrowing and national debt. Most of the left want to keep borrowing as if it’s either not a problem or the lenders need to be taught a lesson.
It was telling that Starmer loyalist Labour insiders tried to hit back at John Healey’s resignation letter by saying ‘he wants money for defence at the cost of schools and hospitals”
Well no, where you would find the money, and – as I’ve said before it is eye watering sums to truly rebuild our defence capability – is Welfare. Labour couldn’t even consider it, and if some do, their colleagues won’t let them.
Now it’s true that a large chunk of that is pensions but one of the big growth areas is spending on support for low level mental health provision for young people. In and of itself it would not redress the balance but that’s spending to support the very generation that needs to be in work and paying taxes.
There are a now a million NEETs in our country. Not in employment, education or training. Lives to live with little prospect of filling the requirements the older generation will inevitably demand.
Labour’s economic madness in pursuit of a ‘fairer working environment’ and in search of more money to spend on welfare is actually reducing the employment opportunities for the very generation they’d need to tax but in many cases pay for.
Of those that are working many feel they can’t afford to have children in the same way they struggle to buy a house – or indeed get a job in the first place. Many are struggling to pay off an education we strongly encouraged them to invest in only to discover the reason for doing it, is no longer a guarantee.
AI, which is still much misunderstood by far too many people, isn’t like the ‘Millenium Bug’ – a technical doomsday scenario that did exist but was worked on to resolve – it is genuinely going to revolutionise our world. It will change the world of work, meaning wholesale adaption of how humans labour for a living.
We could of course harness this in the UK, where we have the potential to be global leaders, but that would require investing in it seriously – Liz Kendall’s recent announcement of money was frankly peanuts – and not having energy costs where they are now.
It would require us to see building things as a benefit not an eyesore or a problem. It‘s all very well Miliband looking to a green and pleasant future if everyone in it is unemployed, underemployed or broke, and it can’t be defended from those who’d wish to steal it, or destroy it.
Yes, we need an offer to young people, investing in their future, for our future, but it’s going to need a fundamental mind shift in our politics and future planning.
One reason I have hope in the Conservative party at the moment is it has been taught a brutal lesson and knows it has to produce something wholly new. That’s not easy for a party whose very instincts are to conserve, and keep steady that which works.
The problem is things don’t work. As a result more and more people don’t either. And Kemi Badenoch has from the start said our offer – has to be about the future.
In the face of a lot of opposition from their own, a number of Conservatives have pushed for a social media ban for under 16’s. I’d point out most of those in favour have, like me, children of a certain age, and have reacted to a reality that needs does need addressing.
There is a bigger reality when we think of our children, and grandchildren, and it needs addressing in a far more comprehensive way.
Yes, we need an offer to the younger generation. Not just us, the country needs an offer to the younger generation. Given how much we will rely on them, whilst curbing their opportunities and piling on the debt.
It’s not a social nicety or political box to tick; it is essential to all our futures.