Young people’s mistrust of government should worry Labour

This week I attended the British Election Study conference with my colleagues at Class. It was in the lower ground floor of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills; a part of London the modern world is apparently yet to reach, given the event was largely a carnival of professional white men wondering why everyone else feels excluded by politics. Physician, heal thyself.

Nevertheless there were some interesting revelations for Labour supporters wondering about the results of May 2015, not least of which the hypothesis that the biggest party in a hung parliament may have to go into coalition with the SNP. Now that’s a game changer.

This prediction was largely overlooked, though, in favour of the dilemma du jour; that is, widespread political disillusionment sending voters into the duplicitous arms of Nigel Farage. In the exploration of this dilemma an interesting observation emerged: the UK has one of the least satisfied electorates in the EU because, according to Professor Cees van der Eijk, “a large number of people do not see much difference between the political parties.”

In light of Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday, that seems apposite. Miliband may as well have just said “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.” I spent most of the morning catching up with the latest episode of Serial (I think Adnan did it), but I gather some of Twitter’s quick-witted users made that comparison too, by parodying the notorious MyDavidCameron poster. According to the British Election Study, this perceived converging of the political parties means people don’t feel represented by anybody, causing “strongly depressed rates of attention, involvement and participation.”

I suppose that’s where we come to the part about people flocking towards UKIP. It’s true that UKIP is attracting those who feel unrepresented elsewhere, but the study was clear that UKIP isn’t attracting politically apathetic people; it’s attracting politically angry people. The statistics show “non-voters” are more likely to go to the Green Party, whereas UKIP’s support comes from defectors of other parties. This should be good news for Labour: they don’t need to convince UKIP voters to engage with politics more broadly, they just need to convince them to switch to Labour.

On the other hand, it should be worrying to Labour that most non-voters seem to prefer the Green Party. The Study didn’t break the figures down by age, but I wonder if age plays a part in the Greens attracting first-time voters. According to the Pew Research Centre, “Milennials” (or Generation Y to you and me) are more progressive than any generation that has come before them. They’re interested in self-expression, they’re more connected through social media, more socially liberal, and less interested in traditions like marriage and organised religion. In other words, they’re quite stereotypically Green. Most interestingly, Pew found Milennials are highly distrustful of government, and I wonder if that’s why they might prefer a party whose MP gets arrested at an anti-fracking protest, rather than one which is an established feature of Westminster.

With six months to go, it’s too late to start making recommendations about how Labour could win by a landslide in 2015. I think all parties have to accept disillusionment and anti-establishment sentiment will play a big part in the election, whoever crosses the finish line first. The party that takes power will do so by the skin of its teeth in May; and if politicians want to survive beyond the next six months, they’ll have to start asking themselves some difficult questions.