In Scunthorpe town centre there’s a statue of two steelworkers in 1940s clothing. The woman, on a bicycle, is reaching her hand after the man in front. He’s the leader, a solid model of industrial masculinity. At 11am, the statue is ignored by the teens on push-bikes simultaneously peddling and looking at their phones.
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 number of young adults aged 16 to 24 who are Neet in the UK has risen by over 300,000 since 2021, totalling almost one million, or roughly one in seven. The British Chambers of Commerce has issued a warning about a “lost generation” that poses a risk to businesses and the economy.
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.
There’s a market here for disrupter politicians to break through and target a generation of boys who feel let down and insecure about their futures. Particularly lads who are addicted to their phones. The Gen Zs born between 1997 and 2012 are the digital natives who could help decide the next general election if politicians can tap in to both a desire for easy answers and leapfrog widespread news avoidance.
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
Young men alone are not enough to make Farage the next PM
Read MoreAt 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.
“Young women are particularly likely to support the Greens and historically support Labour more than young men. I think there is something going on among the youngest generation (Gen Z) – there is more polarisation between young men and young women. But the idea that a huge proportion of young men have moved to the right is an exaggeration and it’s hard to unpick because they are a small category of voters.
“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.
It’s not just true in the UK. Historically, US men and women have voted differently, with men favouring Republicans and women Democrats, but this wasn’t true for younger voters until recently. Instead, young men and women have historically leaned left until a survey showed otherwise.
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.
The US recession and the Covid-19 pandemic profoundly impacted young men during their formative years. Such feelings have caused Gen Z men to distrust the government and institutions and paved the way for the disruptive Trump.
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.
Younger European voters are increasingly supporting newer, often far-right, parties, unlike older voters who favour established centrist parties. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, an anti-immigration far-right group, successfully appealed to young voters by connecting affordable housing with immigration restrictions. Young Portuguese people, frustrated by housing and other quality-of-life problems, found common cause with Chega, the far-right party meaning “Enough”. Support for the leftist Greens is declining in Germany and Finland.
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.
Lots of voters in their late twenties, thirties and forties still identify Farage is the architect of the Brexit. Gen Z, however, was too young to vote in 2016. When Reform UK leader Nigel Farage campaigns in deprived areas such as Scunthorpe, the young lads take selfies and post them on their own TikTok channels. Farage’s own channel has 1.2 million followers.
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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