Give the young a change they can believe in (FT.com)

May 6th, 2010

When the dust settles on Cleggmania and the polling experts set to work analysing the data from election 2010, one important question will have to be answered. Can young voters be bothered?

A history of the voting age offers a fascinating perspective on how British society has changed over the past 100 years. At the start of the 20th century, democracy was a practice confined to men over 21 who owned a property or lived in suitable lodgings. Women got the vote in 1918 but only if they were aged over 30; the minimum age was brought into line with men a decade later. Not until 1970 did the 18-21s finally join the party, rather contradicting today’s view of the swinging, liberated sixties.

These hard-won gains clash with the apathy of young voters today. Since Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997, when just over half of 18-24-year-olds cast their ballots according to Ipsos Mori, voting in the youngest age range collapsed to 39 per cent in 2001. Four years later, despite overall turnout increasing by two points, it fell to 37 per cent. In March this year, the Electoral Commission warned that the electoral roll had deteriorated so much that over half of the youngest cohort were probably not registered.

So at the start of this campaign, the youth shrug seemed to threaten parliament’s legitimacy. At what fraction of the youth vote – a third, a quarter, a fifth – does the House of Commons cease to represent Britain? And with research showing that voting is a habit best learnt young, how long before such apathy creeps ivy-like through the demographic cracks to pull the whole house down?

That at least was the thinking before the first debate. Nick Clegg’s arrival on the stage like a young gunslinger forcing his two established rivals to dive for cover appeared to change all that. A rush of first-time voters to register has been reported, while the Liberal Democrat surge has been backed by 40-50 per cent of 18-24s. Meanwhile, the number of young people saying they will definitely vote is 10 per cent up on the same point in 2005.

But take a step back, catch your breath and look at the big picture. That first debate was a piece of television history, a defining moment that cannot be repeated. The novelty of those 90 minutes is what has made this campaign different. But both the debates and the Lib Dem leader will soon become part of the political furniture rather than exciting interlopers.

How changed is the landscape really? Even now, the proportion of young people saying they will definitely vote lags 25 per cent behind the rest of the electorate. I have spoken to youth workers in Brixton who point out that their young charges have never heard of the Liberal Democrats, let alone its dashing leader.

Whether or not more 18-24s vote this time, they may feel cheated by the result. “Life’s not fair, son,” is a useful bit of advice for when a blatant penalty is waved away by the referee. But it seems a trifle inadequate for justifying how Gordon Brown might “win” by coming third with 28 per cent of the vote. Their bewilderment with politics goes beyond the perversity of the voting system. The iPod generation are expert at shuffling between the issues and joining specific campaigns, but they are less keen to throw their lot in with a party’s entire programme. The grey managerialism that will surely return after the election to deal with the deficit has never inspired them. In short, the overall trend will be down not up.

So what should be done? There is a school of thought that says we need to make the process easier – offer text voting, votes at 16 – to tie in with citizenship classes and more “participation” initiatives. But it smacks rather of desperation, in particular the argument that we must give GCSE students the vote simply because you fear that by 18 they’ve been lost to apathy for good. And while schemes like the Young Mayors and UK Youth Parliament have had minor successes, they tend to reach only the usual suspects who like joining things.

In an ideal world, at the next election, the prime minister would introduce emergency legislation raising the voting age to 25. Within hours, a Facebook campaign would be raging – “Universal Suffrage includes us!” – a generation blasé about “one person one vote” suddenly mobilised, and the legislation could be quickly repealed.

Back in reality, a mixture of common sense and lateral thinking is needed. Young people say they cannot see any difference between the parties and complain that politicians never bother to visit the places where they live and work. Once the blip of that first television debate has gone, the parties will be back where they started. Their message needs to be clear, delivered with immediacy and unaccompanied by baseball caps.

Entry Filed under: Social policy, UK reportage