How to engage young people? Information and Choice

As a young person (well, 25) I feel somewhat qualified to comment on how the Labour Party can get more young people interested in politics and voting. Like many members, I speak to a lot of young people both inside and outside of the party about politics, current affairs and how they feel on various issues. What strikes me is two things: there is little middle ground, people either ‘get’ politics or they don’t.

Something I hear all too often is that people don’t vote because “I don’t feel like I know enough about what’s happening”. Or occasionally “I don’t vote because none of the parties represent me and my beliefs”. In a nutshell, these are the biggest challenges we face and can be generally summarised into information and choice.

The easiest way to inform young people about politics is through education, particularly in schools and colleges. I remember my own Citizenship lessons and, despite an all-round sterling education at my school, the Citizenship lessons were woeful. I recall one lesson about politics (the only one) where we were tasked with naming as many Ministers as we could. Hardly revolutionary.

Instead, we ought to be encouraging young people to look critically at politics and learn about its impact. Teachers ought to be emphasising the centrality of politics in everything we do. Young people need to know the basics of the democratic structure: the roles of Councillors, MPs, Lords and MEPs as well as how their respective political bodies function. Aside from the functioning of politics, we need to educate students about the political backbone of modern political parties. The major parties largely have key concerns whether that is social conservatism, social justice, socialism, economic liberalism, green politics, libertarianism etc.

I’m no teacher but there are ways that these can be explored creatively and interactively. Students could set up a mock Parliament; have debates around issues where they have to argue one side of the argument and schools could reach out into the community inviting speakers from political parties to hustings where students can put their questions to people who can each present a political viewpoint.

The other, trickier issue is choice. We are all astounded by choice in every aspect of our lives. Yet politics is bland, homogenous and boring to most. Something I hear with increasing regularity is “I don’t want to vote for anyone because they’re all the same”. So why not offer people more choice? The three main political parties are grouped around the centre ground each running in ever decreasing circles. There is no bold policy and ultimately no idealism yet people wonder why young people are turned off from politics.

If we tackle the lack of information, we have to back it up with a whole scale diversification of the political system. We should be looking seriously at e-voting and same day voter registration (as used successfully in America) generally making it as easy as possible for all people – not just young people – to vote. But ultimately political parties should be more idealistic and more radical in their offering.

Indeed, our democratic system is frankly nothing of the sort: it’s undemocratic. By and large, young people know this. The notion of a ‘wasted vote’ or a ‘tactical vote’ is alien to young people used to getting what they want. Perhaps political parties could capitalise on a prevailing consensus for a more proportional electoral system to ensure that the views of everyone are properly represented before the 2015 result forces the hand of parties to implement a fairer electoral system.

Political parties across the spectrum have to stop thinking that young people are disengaged from politics: just because they’re not a card-carrying member of a party, does not mean they don’t have views about how their country should be managed. It’s high time that parties stopped waiting for young people to come to them and started reaching out to young people.