With our two largest political parties badly divided ahead of the European elections, one thing has become clear: our electoral system cannot depend on its parties to bring people out to vote. So young people have taken it upon ourselves to fill the void. Vote For Your Future, an apolitical campaign (in which I am involved), was set up to get young people, no matter their politics, to stand up and be counted. Record numbers of us registered before the 7 May deadline for Thursday’s elections: hundreds of thousands, all under the age of 34.
Young people are heavily invested in this election because we know our futures are at stake: our ability to travel, study and settle across the continent, not to mention our prospects for jobs and for our health service are at risk. The vast majority of us want our future to be within the European Union. A recent poll had 42% of 18-to-24-year-olds saying they intend to vote for explicitly anti-Brexit parties; 29% said they intended to vote for Labour, which, in its mealy-mouthed way, just about counts as pro-European.
The energy of those we’ve engaged with has been great to witness. Our campaign is emblazoned on bus shelters and billboards across the country. The cause has been picked up and moulded by creatives, with Wolfgang Tillmans – the Turner-prize-winning artist who I suspect means more to my generation than Stephen Barclay – designing materials for the European-wide Vote Together campaign.
Lower turnout among young voters has long been taken as evidence that we are ignorant and apathetic. But the fault of the young staying away should lie at the doorstep of politicians themselves. We see the Conservative party tearing itself apart over just how hard a Brexit it wants, and we witness Nigel Farage’s Brexit party making all the running. The successful politics of recent years have been grounded in notions of the past – “take back control” and “make America great again” – that show we are not the target audience.
The other parties don’t seem to have any answers. A vision for young voters isn’t going to be found in the born-again centrism of Change UK, which apparently wants to bring back a form of national service. Nor is my generation enthused by Jeremy Corbyn’s attempted triangulation on Brexit. And, for all their comparative appeal, it’s unlikely that the Greens, with just one MP, or a Liberal Democrat party still tainted by tuition fees will be seen as a transformative force for our future.
Getting young people out en masse tomorrow lies in asking them to vote against something – in rejecting Farage and his vision for Britain. They should take note that, should he triumph, these elections will be interpreted as an endorsement for his catastrophic Brexit. But in future we deserve something to vote for, too. Voting shouldn’t be an act of privation for a generation craving a politics which accepts the modern world and looks to the future. Remaining in the European Union is a necessary but not sufficient condition of this.
If, despite our efforts, young people vote in fewer numbers than their elders, it would be helpful if, for once, commentators did not point the finger at my generation. The truth is that there has been a systematic failure to inform, enthuse and invest young people in electoral politics. With the teaching of basic political literacy absent in most schools across the country, students can be forgiven for feeling confused in confusing times, and if parties expect their votes they must first prove they deserve them.
We are not apathetic. In the last year alone we have led one million people through the streets of London calling for a people’s vote. We forced parliament to declare a climate emergency through a string of protests as original as they were persistent. And we have battled, too often against the odds, to make our voices heard. For now at least, we have a chance to change the course of history just by showing up.
Yet, though we can march, occupy and protest every hour of every single day, unless we can connect the energy supply of the new generation to parliamentary politics through the ballot box the wheels of power may never move in our direction.
• Lara Spirit is co-president of Our Future Our Choice
