This is a thoughtful article published in the Conversation, written by Benjamin Bowman, Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath. Bowman argues that younger voters have been patronised and overlooked for too long and when politics is meaningful for them, they take part with gusto.
Source: Surge in young voters is the first sign of a return to proud working-class politics
Once again, this is an example of Theresa May‘s poor leadership and judgement – without effective strategic analysis, proper research, costings and risk analysis. May simplistically thought that the election was about giving her a mandate for Brexit, although she consistently refused to answer question on Brexit, demanding a blank cheque. The Conservatives simply went after UKIP and SNP voters and were successful. BUT strategically, Jeremy Corbyn‘s Labour Party outflanked May. By energizing young voters, Corbyn opened up the raw wounds of austerity, unemployment and social welfare.
Now that the UK’s younger population has been mobilized politically, they are unlikely to step back, providing the Labour Party with an enduring advantage.
Thoughts?
Benjamin Bowman is correct ,the young will not step back and those that went to University,spent crippling amounts of money on tuition fees and living costs will not be placated by well meaning advice about interview technique and communication skills as they stack shelves in Tesco supermarkets.
Those who are not academically gifted are not going to be content with no jobs,no prospect of a house,no ability to marry,set up home or have children of their own or travel or become independent and single.
That said ,Jeremy Corbyn has to level with them about what this is going to take and politicians,educators and our elite have deliberately avoided talking about AI,Machine learning,RPO,robotics,cybernetics ,nanotechnology and 3D printing and how wealth is to be carved up after 2033 just 16 years from today.
Steps have to be taken now to systems build upwards,downwards and reclaim land from the sea in order to deal with the current housing shortage of 12.4 million houses which was just 4.4 million in 1990.
Our current build rate of 150,000 a year is offset by nett migration from all sources of 400,000 so the arithmetic is plain.
The young who are not academically gifted need to be taught craft based skills,how to sell ,how to run a micro business and a useful language so that like the Chinese they can “go out and bring back in”. This country is too small to accommodate them all and we should stop pretending to them that things can go on as they are. Greybeards like me and home based versions of Dr Alf could become mentors for this process but we would need paying,all that guff about “putting something back” is fine for those with more money than sense but insulting to the rest of us.
The process of hiring people for top jobs has to be made meritocratic using neural nets and eliminating HR apparachiks who consistently make the wrong choices.
The economy has to be streamlined,rendered more efficient and the public sector made affordable so that it operates more like a composite of Singapore and Switzerland with Danish levels of corruption(they have the least corruption of any country on the planet).
We have to export which means caps on executive pay for those bosses who could export ,could deliver but do not do so and we need greater shareholder powers to remove under performing executives much faster with second chances but nothing beyond that.
The world has to be our marketplace and the young need to be taught useful languages within a much more intensive curriculum whilst to solve the export salesforce conundrum now ,quadrupling the numbers of export salespeople,increasing writing down allowances and the issuance of the new instant translator devices deal with the problem of lack of language skills.
Cash mountains held by risk averse executives would be heavily taxed so as to encourage export led growth through the creation of a Mittelstand based on German best practice and citizenship bonds would be issued and sold to wealthy inward investors who would have to commit to appointing large numbers of the indigenous population in businesses that met set criteria.