Dr Peter Moore: Urge young people to engage with politics

I’m not great at quizzes. I even find medical questions challenging but I’m especially hopeless at questions about celebrities. When asked about which celeb married, divorced or is in a relationship with which other celeb I’ve not heard of any of them, making the answer rather difficult.
There is a popular image of us baby boomers born just after the Second World War spending the 1960s at festivals, free sex, protests against the Vietnam war and smoking pot.
There is the famous quote attributed to various stars “if you remember the 60s you weren’t there”. My family cannot believe that I have never taken illegal drugs, embraced flower power, found all this free sex or been to a protest or a festival. I was too busy failing my A-levels.
Finally, the popular image is that our generation swung right, supported Brexit and voted Conservative. There is a famous quote that if you’re not a socialist in your twenties there’s something wrong with your heart and if you’re still a socialist in your thirties there’s something wrong with your head. It is true that older people are more right wing and more likely to vote conservative but this is a simplification.
People on both political extremes often claim their views represent “ordinary people” but both extremes cannot be correct. Rather than assuming everyone agrees because all your friends do, I prefer to look at objective evidence which means a bona fide opinion poll from a reputable company.
I’m not on Instagram or tik tok but to read Facebook or twitter (X) many of the young in generation Z, born between the mid-90s and early 2010s, live on a different planet which is why it is always a good idea to have a younger person on your quiz team.
But is Gen Z really very different? The loud ones appear passionately left wing, demonstrating at every opportunity but do they represent a majority?
Polling of 18 to 24-year-olds by YouGov this summer showed that 60 per cent put inflation and the cost of living as the most important issue facing the country, followed by the economy. I would have assumed that the young would be more concerned about the environment and climate change but while 61 per cent of the younger people were concerned about climate change, 66 per cent of the over 70s were also concerned. Not a massive difference.
We keep hearing about the universities banning people who they believe are transphobic, passionately supporting trans people compared to us geriatrics but this poll showed that 52 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds saw prejudice against trans people as a significant problem against 47 per cent of the over 70s, again not a huge difference.
Even looking at our overall political views us baby boomers were mainly in the middle between right and left while Generation Z were more left wing but even here only nine per cent of them said that were far left. 29 per cent were to the right of the mean.
Where there were differences, I found depressing but perhaps not surprising. Many younger people are apathetic about politics and just over half, 51 per cent do not believe in democracy. Many would like a benign dictator who does not need to listen but will always do the “right thing”.
Having been brought up in the shadow of the Secord World War us baby boomer generation know where that will lead.
In the 1990s most people of all ages voted but by the 2000s it was only just over half of the under thirties. Many do not feel that any government will make a difference to their lives and that politicians are more interested in older people. The danger is that, if younger people don’t bother to vote then political parties will concentrate on the older people, making the younger people’s concern a self-fulfilling prophecy.
With the prospect of an election next year we need to encourage younger people to engage with real politics, not simply “likes” on social media. There is clear evidence that they are a great generation with their heart in the right place. We need to persuade them that every vote matters.