Tessa Milligan - Stop Treating The Young As Political Nobodies - We Decided This Election After All
Having just read yet
another condescending article, this one titled “Let’s stop treating the young like political sages”, I am
feeling quite insulted and patronised, as are most people my age. No, we don’t want a
lollipop as a reward for voting - we want to be politically acknowledged. We
took our political power and we wielded it. No more taxation without
representation. What the big political
commentators seem unable to understand is that maybe, just maybe, a vote for
the Labour party this election was not a symbol of indoctrination into some
cult, but instead a vote against the Conservative Party.
The Tories have
inadvertently been cultivating a generation which doesn’t like them. Policies
from the last seven years which have targeted the young - and yes, tripling
tuition fees have played a big role in shaping how we feel about you - have
created a bitter group of voters. And we’re bored of the
“magic money tree” lies we’ve been fed that tell us to “live within our means”
despite the fact Tory chancellor George Osborne tripled the national debt by
spending £500 billion+ (on god knows what, because we didn’t see any of that
money!) We also didn’t like
your manifesto by the way. Fox hunting, Hard Brexit, taking our grannies’
houses - they’re not very fashionable proposals amongst this generation. Plus
it was a poorly written document with hardly any facts or figures to
substantiate it’s points. I’d grade it a U. No points for no effort.
We may seem stupid to
you, but as long as you had 20/20 vision and were literate, you could see that
the Labour manifesto had full costings, whilst the Conservative manifesto had
none. Right-wing
commentators like to blame Corbyn for single-handedly creating this huge
resurgence in youth voter turnout, but that would be far too easy. It gives
them comfort to think that as soon as Corbyn is gone, the mass anti-Tory youth
vote will go with him. It won’t.
And they like paint
us, at best, as some “hopelessly naive” school kids who once watched a cartoon
about socialism and liked it or, at worst, some crazed Red Army of teenagers
baying for the blood of pensioners who voted to Leave the EU. The truth is, this was
an anti-Tory vote. This was a shout to the political establishment. And we
demanded to start getting political respect, or get out of Downing Street. Laughing in our faces
and sending us on our way with threats to raise the minimum voting age to 21 is
not going to help you. But feel free to carry
on belittling us. Because as long as you do, the Tories will never win a
majority again. Understood?
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