Poppy Coburn is a journalist.
One of the most remarkable sights at Conservative Party conference was the spectacle of hundreds of young Tories bemoaning the lack of policies aimed at improving the lives of the next generation. Again and again, the question is raised: what has the Conservative party got to offer young people?
The party higher-ups unsurprisingly answer with the usual bundle of half-baked concessions, from mental health hubs to Net Zero. The only minister actively pursuing policies that would genuinely help young people is doing so seemingly unintentionally.
It’s not entirely surprising that Suella Braverman is facing hostility from her fellow Cabinet ministers regarding her immigration plans. After all, the natural constituency of the Conservatives (the elderly) have overwhelmingly enjoyed the benefits that migrants bring, like cheaper services and housing wealth. It’s the young who have really taken the brunt of the economic downsides.
The political paradox is that the same young people who are suffering because of our intensely lax borders tend to be more sympathetic to politicians who support migration on moral grounds. However, we may be making a mistake in conflating young people’s aversion to the Tories with ‘wokeism’.
It’s not that the Government has become too radical to attract the youth vote – rather, the problem is that they are nowhere near radical enough. By focusing on a restrictionist immigration policy, the Conservatives may paradoxically be able to win back young voters.
The encouragement of millennials to attend university en masse, followed by the introduction and subsequent hiking of tuition fees, is one easily identifiable reason for why young voters feel turned off from a Conservative government. Kwasi Kwarteng’s controversial mini-budget underlined just how exploited this generational cohort has become: graduates earning £50k will pay a higher marginal rate than a top-earner on £150K.
You don’t need to agree with Peter Turchin and his ‘elite overproduction’ thesis to see how a glut of underemployed, politically-isolated graduates will pose a major problem for the Conservative Party.
Unfortunately for these graduates, the Government is firm in their belief that Britain is buckling under the weight of a ‘skills shortage’, and lobbies for the importation of international students to help make up the average; 486,900 entry visas granted last year were for ‘study’.
Universities are, by their very nature, internationalist institutions. There is no denying that being able to attract the very best minds from around the globe to study in our top universities is a great boon to the country at large. Migration Watch identifies our higher education market as “a major export and an important component of soft power”.
But study visas, aided by liberalisation under Boris Johnson, are increasingly being turned into a cheap backdoor into the nation for migrants and their dependents.
The data is clear. Study visas are a major long-term immigration route: 120,000 people stayed on after expiry of their initial study visa, with most granted further visas enabling them to remain for longer. Around 20,000 people per year have been granted a permanent stay in the UK after having originally arrived on a study visa.
Most concerningly of all, UCAS is already predicting a 50 per cent increase in international applications by 2026, which would constituent a massive infusion into the labour market precisely at a time when services are at a breaking point and wage growth for the young has flatlined.
Colleges and universities rely on international students. Without their money, many may well collapse.
But is this really such a bad thing? Indeed, by pursuing Braverman’s strategy, the Conservatives may be able to kill two birds with one stone: finally following up on decades of broken manifesto promises to get immigration figures down, while also destroying one of the most damaging legacies of the New Labour revolution in the process.
There’s a near-universal consensus amongst young Westminster hangers-on that the Tories’ failure to act on housing reform will render them unelectable for a generation. After all, what’s there to support about Thatcherism without the requisite property-owning democracy?
The focus generally been around the artificial restriction on supply; unsurprising, considering the consistent u-turning made by any Conservative minister who so much as whispers that the problem may not be solved by simply talking about the crisis. High house prices are the result of a shortage of homes, and even if we do see the predicted ten per cent drop in prices come to pass, this would only place us back to 2020 levels.
It’s tricky for Conservative MPs to push YIMBY policies, particularly if they are representation rural constituencies. While this is no excuse for inaction on the ministerial side, it will be difficult to convince anyone in the party to back any more major supply-side reforms while current polling remains as dire as it is. YIMBYism is popular on Twitter. It isn’t with the electorate.
But the Conservatives cannot allow this crisis to continue – so, again, they can take a look at our immigration strategy instead.
We have granted 1.1 million entry clearance grants to individuals in this year alone, while scrapping planning reform and vastly undershooting on our already modest house building targets. This is exacerbating an already intolerable situation. If current migration trends continue, just over half of extra homes needed in England by the early 2040s will be a result of immigration. This would require a new home every five minutes, or nearly 300 every day.
Short of a genuinely Stalinist mobilisation, it would be literally impossible to keep up with growing demand. If the Truss Government is indeed going ahead with plans to scrap their already modest 300,000 homes-a-year building target, they must ensure that demand is kept to reasonable levels – and that the needs of native Brits are prioritised.
Young voters will lose out the most from Global Britain. The signs are clear: this is a generation that believes it has no real future to look forward to, and one that has been abandoned by the supposed party of posterity. A heavy election defeat may already be inevitable.
But two years is a long time in politics. Liz Truss and her Cabinet would do well to listen to the warnings of the Home Secretary. She may well prove to be their greatest asset in future elections.
Poppy Coburn is a journalist.
One of the most remarkable sights at Conservative Party conference was the spectacle of hundreds of young Tories bemoaning the lack of policies aimed at improving the lives of the next generation. Again and again, the question is raised: what has the Conservative party got to offer young people?
The party higher-ups unsurprisingly answer with the usual bundle of half-baked concessions, from mental health hubs to Net Zero. The only minister actively pursuing policies that would genuinely help young people is doing so seemingly unintentionally.
It’s not entirely surprising that Suella Braverman is facing hostility from her fellow Cabinet ministers regarding her immigration plans. After all, the natural constituency of the Conservatives (the elderly) have overwhelmingly enjoyed the benefits that migrants bring, like cheaper services and housing wealth. It’s the young who have really taken the brunt of the economic downsides.
The political paradox is that the same young people who are suffering because of our intensely lax borders tend to be more sympathetic to politicians who support migration on moral grounds. However, we may be making a mistake in conflating young people’s aversion to the Tories with ‘wokeism’.
It’s not that the Government has become too radical to attract the youth vote – rather, the problem is that they are nowhere near radical enough. By focusing on a restrictionist immigration policy, the Conservatives may paradoxically be able to win back young voters.
The encouragement of millennials to attend university en masse, followed by the introduction and subsequent hiking of tuition fees, is one easily identifiable reason for why young voters feel turned off from a Conservative government. Kwasi Kwarteng’s controversial mini-budget underlined just how exploited this generational cohort has become: graduates earning £50k will pay a higher marginal rate than a top-earner on £150K.
You don’t need to agree with Peter Turchin and his ‘elite overproduction’ thesis to see how a glut of underemployed, politically-isolated graduates will pose a major problem for the Conservative Party.
Unfortunately for these graduates, the Government is firm in their belief that Britain is buckling under the weight of a ‘skills shortage’, and lobbies for the importation of international students to help make up the average; 486,900 entry visas granted last year were for ‘study’.
Universities are, by their very nature, internationalist institutions. There is no denying that being able to attract the very best minds from around the globe to study in our top universities is a great boon to the country at large. Migration Watch identifies our higher education market as “a major export and an important component of soft power”.
But study visas, aided by liberalisation under Boris Johnson, are increasingly being turned into a cheap backdoor into the nation for migrants and their dependents.
The data is clear. Study visas are a major long-term immigration route: 120,000 people stayed on after expiry of their initial study visa, with most granted further visas enabling them to remain for longer. Around 20,000 people per year have been granted a permanent stay in the UK after having originally arrived on a study visa.
Most concerningly of all, UCAS is already predicting a 50 per cent increase in international applications by 2026, which would constituent a massive infusion into the labour market precisely at a time when services are at a breaking point and wage growth for the young has flatlined.
Colleges and universities rely on international students. Without their money, many may well collapse.
But is this really such a bad thing? Indeed, by pursuing Braverman’s strategy, the Conservatives may be able to kill two birds with one stone: finally following up on decades of broken manifesto promises to get immigration figures down, while also destroying one of the most damaging legacies of the New Labour revolution in the process.
There’s a near-universal consensus amongst young Westminster hangers-on that the Tories’ failure to act on housing reform will render them unelectable for a generation. After all, what’s there to support about Thatcherism without the requisite property-owning democracy?
The focus generally been around the artificial restriction on supply; unsurprising, considering the consistent u-turning made by any Conservative minister who so much as whispers that the problem may not be solved by simply talking about the crisis. High house prices are the result of a shortage of homes, and even if we do see the predicted ten per cent drop in prices come to pass, this would only place us back to 2020 levels.
It’s tricky for Conservative MPs to push YIMBY policies, particularly if they are representation rural constituencies. While this is no excuse for inaction on the ministerial side, it will be difficult to convince anyone in the party to back any more major supply-side reforms while current polling remains as dire as it is. YIMBYism is popular on Twitter. It isn’t with the electorate.
But the Conservatives cannot allow this crisis to continue – so, again, they can take a look at our immigration strategy instead.
We have granted 1.1 million entry clearance grants to individuals in this year alone, while scrapping planning reform and vastly undershooting on our already modest house building targets. This is exacerbating an already intolerable situation. If current migration trends continue, just over half of extra homes needed in England by the early 2040s will be a result of immigration. This would require a new home every five minutes, or nearly 300 every day.
Short of a genuinely Stalinist mobilisation, it would be literally impossible to keep up with growing demand. If the Truss Government is indeed going ahead with plans to scrap their already modest 300,000 homes-a-year building target, they must ensure that demand is kept to reasonable levels – and that the needs of native Brits are prioritised.
Young voters will lose out the most from Global Britain. The signs are clear: this is a generation that believes it has no real future to look forward to, and one that has been abandoned by the supposed party of posterity. A heavy election defeat may already be inevitable.
But two years is a long time in politics. Liz Truss and her Cabinet would do well to listen to the warnings of the Home Secretary. She may well prove to be their greatest asset in future elections.