Gen-Z and the aftermath of the General Election: what Young People can teach us
During the afternoon of the vote for the 2019 General Election, the expectation of the Left-wing was focussed on the images of politically engaged young people across the country queuing up to vote in the rain. Much like in 2017, #youthquake was trending in the echo chamber of Twitter, with hundreds of thousands of tweets sharing expectant excitement of the outcome the next generation could bring. Like 2017, we know the rest of the story. The majority of voters aged 18-24 did actually vote for Labour, but were outnumbered by the older generations. So what is the story for those young people?
Zest Theatre have spent much of 2019 researching and creating Youthquake, a new touring theatre production that explores the lives of young people and how they want to change the world. We visited 11 cities across the length of country to research the show. We interviewed a diverse range of over 800 young people aged 12 – 22, gathering 11 hours of audio from teenagers talking openly and honestly about their experiences.
Universally, they told us of the increasing pressures our rigid Education System. We heard the familiar stories of how the NHS was crumbling, their youth centres had been cut, and the increase in higher education was excluding some from the education they wanted. In every city we listened to the heart-breaking realities of poverty and living on Universal Credit. We also heard their fears about how the planet was dying and no one was doing anything about it.
They were angry about misogyny, racism, homophobia and xenophobia. In fact, they unanimously rejected inequality and injustice.
But most concerning was how this melting pot of stress and anxiety was damaging their mental health, and how their parents just weren’t equipped to know what to do to really help.
Reaction to the Election
Youthquake features local young performers drawn from the local area we’re visiting on tour that week. Over the last month, in light of the 2019 election result, we spoke to 140 of our Youth Cast members to hear what their take on the election result was. They were all aged 16 to 18 and participants in our local Youth Cast WhatsApp group chats.
There was large criticism of the Left for the pressure and expectation they had put on young people. Lauren (17) from Brighton said “I can’t help feeling intensely angry when I think about how they are just expecting us to come a long and fix everything. There is so little we can do to make any real change, especially for those of us who couldn’t vote.”
Yet again, young people felt they had been left unheard. Henry (17), from Brighton said “By voting Conservative, the older generations have not only voted against our future – against tackling the climate crisis, against our access to higher education, and against our ability to grow up as part of the EU – but they have voted against our ability to vote by choosing a party which opposes votes for 16 – 17 year olds.”
There was genuine emotion and shock at the proven lies, disinformation, prejudice and nationalistic language used by the winning side. Summer (17), from Bath, was perplexed why the country would even vote Conservative “to fix all the mess that the Conservatives themselves have created.” Young people judge their leaders on their relevance and efficacy, as Emily (18), from Middlesbrough, explained: “I think it even goes as simple as setting a good example. Seeing our Prime Minister hide in a fridge to avoid answering a question was a low point.”
There was unified annoyance that Brexit had dominated the debate, that domestic issues were ignored by voters. They were frustrated that voters were more concerned about their own money and reducing their tax bill than helping children in poverty.
There was also palpable anger from young people of colour. Moses (17), from East London said, “As a person of Colour, if the politician making decisions about my life is racist and making blatantly offensive remarks about my skin colour, then I know the rules that they make will have zero regard for people like me. Boris Johnson doesn’t care about you unless you’re rich, upper class and white.”
The LGBT+ community echoed these comments, as did those with disabilities, who were also concerned about what would happen to the support services and medication they need just to get through a day of school. Cas (18), from Lincoln added “People say ‘we’ve survived 10 years already, we’ll be able to do it again’ not taking into account the hundreds of thousands that didn’t survive last time around.”
Much like the findings of the election exit polls, the vast majority of our young people supported Left-wing politics, but there were also Conservative voices on the Right. Whilst these differing political stances meant our focus groups didn’t 100% agree on all topics, what was clear was they all cared about everything and felt huge responsibility of it.
But most interestingly was watching how these groups dealt with the conflict in conversation. They created a safe space for real conversation with those who had differing opinion. This generation are totally optimistic in how they can work together to solve problems. Across this process we’ve found 16/17 year olds speaking about topics with more compassion and understanding than most adults. Their age means they were denied a vote in 2019, despite thinking about the world in such a complex and nuanced way.
So what next?
If we’re truly going to create the world that our young people are crying out for, then the whole political spectrum needs to step up. The Left need to learn from our young people’s approach, stop the political in fighting to actually listen to each other. Equally, the Right need to listen to with empathy to take on the legitimate concerns of Gen-Z. Our young people feel forgotten and unheard, and yet they have so much to teach us. As a nation we desperately need to give young people space and agency to make their voices heard.
But we should be prepared that when the Youthquake does come, it’ll look different to the politics that we’ve seen before. This generation have more scope to see beyond the system that’s in place. They’re beyond the binary that has defined the world up until this point. This generation are challenging the system that’s set against them, whilst positively redefining their future. In the words of Dillon (17), from Bath, “When we grow up, the world’s going to be a little less fucked up”.