Last week, I sent out a survey to some of my friends, all male and currently in sixth form, inviting them to give their opinions on politics and politicians, as well as asking them how much they felt they knew about politics and where they got their knowledge from. On the whole, this was a useful exercise with people answering honestly and in detail — although my vanity question about how well I would do as prime minister failed catastrophically. Most were pessimistic about my suitability for the top job, citing a perceived lack of experience and, in one case, my apparent anti-pigeon agenda.
Naturally, such a poll is wholly unrepresentative of the UK electorate — and indeed of young people. However, there were a few interesting insights that can provide food for thought when it comes to securing young people’s votes. Broadly, the results can be split into four broad principles: being trustworthy, being more entertaining, addressing domestic decline, and getting tough on media objectivity.
What Young People Think
When asked to rank their opinion of politics and politicians from one to five, the average score was 2.38. Justifications for scores of three or under included the following: ‘a majority of the politicians I know of lack competence’; ‘politicians are corrupt and untrustworthy, and most aren’t willing to listen to the other side’; ‘not focused on the right issues’; ‘an inability to answer questions’; ‘caught in a load of scandals’; ‘mostly useless’.
While a couple of respondents showed greater optimism about the capacity of politics and politicians to make positive change, these answers were hardly reflective of a deeply held trust in our system and its people.
Interestingly, fewer people have heard of Reform UK than UKIP — perhaps due to the influence of Nigel Farage (who tends to be associated with UKIP, despite being a key figure in Reform) and the various memes and viral videos he has inadvertently spawned. When asked to name the first politician that came to mind, every respondent named either a prime minister (Churchill, Thatcher, Cameron, Johnson, Truss and Sunak), president (John F. Kennedy), or leader of the opposition (Corbyn and Starmer). One of the justifications for picking Johnson, as well as the events of his premiership, included his ‘bodying of a child while playing rugby.’ Evidently, comedy can be an effective tactic to cut the ice and gain name recognition among my generation.
Hearteningly, nobody said they would abstain from voting in a general election. Most respondents justified their decision to vote by seeing it as an important civic duty, as well as expressing a desire to have their voice represented and heard. Those who answered ‘maybe’ argued that it would depend on how much they knew about the parties and their policies — something that the media can play a large role in facilitating.
What Young People Want
When it came to matters of policy, however, things became more muddled and disparate. Asked what their top priority would be if they became prime minister for a day, responses varied. Among the most interesting were reducing military funding for Israel and Ukraine to focus on the recession at home; abolishing speed limits on motorways; liberalising the planning system; setting up a ‘cleaning up and restoring the UK’ infrastructure scheme; and ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘there’s not much I can do in a day.’ Perhaps the question could have been worded better, but such answers suggest a general feeling amongst the youth that the UK is in a state of decline and that something must be done to address this. However, the smallness of the sample for this poll leaves plenty of room for objections and further insights.
Distrust in the Media
In terms of sources of information, I came third behind ‘the news’ and social media as the most-accessed source. When asked whether they considered these sources of information reliable and objective, one respondent flipped the question and asked me whether I thought I was reliable. Those who picked ‘the news’ as their go-to source, often cited bias in their response. The BBC was seen as more objective than other media outlets, but many still expressed doubts about the reliability and objectivity of the news in general.
Weariness and mistrust in the country’s news sources need addressing. When it comes to politics, more trust can be gained through systematic crackdowns on sensationalist headlines that bear little relevance to the contents of the article. Without regulation, people will likely become more disillusioned with politics and the media, potentially turning to less conventional — and even less objective — sources of information in their search for the truth. Despite acknowledging limitations in their sources of information, most respondents described feeling reasonably informed about politics.
So what message is the youth sending to our politicians? Based on my small sample, I suggest it’s this: conduct yourself with integrity and avoid division, if you want to gain those pivotal votes; provide some light comic relief, even if inadvertent; focus on addressing domestic woes first; and try to tackle bias in the media. Most crucially, though, you should express strong and unwavering support for pigeons.
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