Why would young people support the welfare state?

John Harris had a somewhat alarming piece in yesterday’s Guardian claiming that young people were increasingly turning to the Tories. This claim on young people’s voting intentions has been somewhat roundly debunked by Anthony Wells at UK Polling, which points out the futility of trying to use one outlying data point to try to support a wider argument that is not represented by the broader evidence. The youth of today are not turning Tory in their droves, and it’s a nonsense to say that they are.

However, what both John Harris and Anthony Wells agree is shown up by both the polling and many of the anecdotes in Harris’ piece is that attitudes from young people towards the welfare state are hardening. As far as I’m concerned, the only surprise about this is that anyone is surprised.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the welfare state is a marvelous thing. The post-war generation who built it are quite right to be proud of it as one of Britain’s greatest achievements, and the Baby Boomer generation who were the first to feel its effects from cradle to grave, knowing with absolute certainty that they would always be protected are right to laud the virtues of the system they clearly love.

I myself am the recipient of a beneficent state, having been educated to degree level before the onset of fees and having twice found myself in need to state support while unemployed. I am and remain grateful for the support I received. But I’m not without my skepticism when it comes to both how effective that support was in helping me back into work or what my future relationship with the welfare state will look like. I’m 38 and I have very serious doubts as to whether I will ever receive a state pension. I can only imagine that for an 18 year old the mere notion sounds absurd.

The world has changed a great deal since 1945 and the foundation of the modern welfare state. But the state has not always moved with that change. My experience – back in happier economic times – was of an impersonal system as little equipped to cope with the variety of modern workforces than Clem Attlee would have been able to comprehend the internet.

And every generation feels a little further away from the kind of system that was as much about nurture as it was support – while the older generations continue to receive levels of support that they place as beyond question and the young place beyond imagining.

Instead of labeling and lamenting a generation that sees the welfare state as something that is failing them and their peers as Tories, perhaps we should be trying to discern why they feel that way. Are they against welfare as a concept or against the way the system works now? What would persuade them to support welfare as a concept? What is it about welfare that they see as unfair or that they would make right?

The cuts are falling disproportionately on the young. The old are escaping relatively unscathed. It is – therefore – no wonder that these same young people feel less affection and affinity with a system they don’t feel is in their corner. As youth unemployment reaches record levels, it must be hard to feel you have a stake in a system that is not about supporting you into developing a life and career.

Instead of berating them about this, we should see what can be salvaged and saved and what needs to be rebuilt to make modern welfare a functional system that is supported by both users and funders (and we need to make the case clearly and believably that we are likely to be both throughout our lives).

I believe the welfare state can and should be a marvelous thing. But to be so again it needs to be the thing those who are its future need it to be, not the decaying memory of the thing we once knew. Uncritical support of a system that is failing those who use it and those who pay for it is the single surest way to kill it. And if we let that happen it will be harder than ever to revive it.