Scunthorpe votes today for the inaugural mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire. The statue is symbolic of a Britain whose heavy industry is memorialised but gone. Its young men aren’t routinely employed by the steel works anymore. Alongside end-of-railway-track coastal towns, de-industrialised cities are ideal breeding grounds for politicians after the Neet vote, youngsters who are not in education, employment, or training.
The problem is particularly pronounced in economically deprived regions, with 16 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds in North-East England and 15 per cent in Wales classed as Neets, versus 9 per cent in London. According to the Office for National Statistics, 23 per cent of young people aged 16 to 34 reported five or more health conditions in 2023, up from 17 per cent in 2019.
Thursday’s regional elections are a temperature-test for how the public feels both about Labour and the Conservatives. But they are also another marker of whether young men and women are carrying on the trend being pulled even further in different political directions.
square TOM NICHOLSON
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At the general election last July, men were more likely to vote for Reform and women more likely to vote for the Green Party. And the gap was particularly stark among the youngest voters – those aged 18 to 24, with 19.7 per cent of women voting Green compared to 13.1 per cent of men. At the opposite end of the scale, 12.9 per cent of young men voted for Reform UK compared to just 5.9 per cent of women.
“Having said that, our hypothesis has to be that social media tends to reinforce our views. And therefore, if we already have some diversions between men and women who perhaps have been socialised more in a social media environment, that might harden the difference,” Rosie Campbell, Professor of Politics, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, who led the research, told The i Paper.
The Harvard Youth Poll found that in the face of economic hardship, social upheaval, and the Covid-19 pandemic, Gen Z men preferred Donald Trump to Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. Meanwhile, women of the same age responded to formative events in their generation by shifting leftward.
But Harvard’s data suggests younger women voters have not emerged from the same destabilising experiences with the same social insecurities. Instead, their personal relationships act as a ballast against the draw of right-wing politics and make them less suspicious of the Democrats, often the defenders of government and institutions alongside healthcare and green issues.
Social media’s reach in the UK is expanding, boasting 54.8 million active users or 79 per cent of the population in February, the last figures available.
The success of Reform on social media exemplifies a broader political shift in communications. A political Peter Pan who can capture the loyalty of these lost boys will have a bunch of votes already in their back pocket come the general election.
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