‘Why Reform poses a threat to Labour among young men’

With Reform rising in the polls, we asked a 19-year-old first-time voter, who backed Labour at the election, for his perspective on the threat Reform poses to Labour.

It doesn’t surprise me that Reform is doing well with young men like me. However, it’s not too late for Labour to win them back if it can show, not just tell, that it is on our side. 

Reform has correctly identified that many young men feel no hope in the future. We can see prices going up and wars everywhere. Add politicians who echo this bleak outlook and you have a recipe for complete hopelessness.

I think that most young people like the idea of meritocracy – that if you work hard, you will succeed. For men, especially, they are told on social media – by figures like Andrew Tate – that being a man is to be successful and have a lot of money.

Lots of young men I know play video games, and that’s a very meritocratic world, where if you have enough skill and put enough effort in, then you get rewarded for it. Then you come out of that world, into the real world which isn’t fair, and which isn’t giving young people the opportunities to be successful, no matter how hard they work. 

What Reform has in common with people like Andrew Tate is that they seem like the only people who are free to say what they want. For many young men, it’s not the fear that individual people might attack you for saying things. It’s more like a cultural atmosphere that makes you feel that you’ve done something wrong. 

And, out of all the political parties, Reform has the most impact on social media. Not just because of the content they produce, but because they understand that when content gets reposted and commented on, that gets it in front of young people.

They’re saying “follow us, and we’ll change the country to make it better place for you”, even if there’s no clear idea about how they would do that. The narrative is more important than the policies for young people, because many of us are like sheep – we don’t really know what’s going on.

There is a perception that being interested in politics and making an effort to find out the detail is uncool. So, a lot of people just follow the narrative that they like the best. The two main parties don’t seem to get it.

I think young people could be attracted to the Conservatives in theory, because they say they believe in meritocracy.

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But that’s undermined because they clearly don’t care about my generation. They only seem to care about winning elections rather than actually changing anything – and after all the turmoil in the last few years, they’re not seen as a strong party.

Among young men I know at least, Labour come across as being the good guys, but they’re also seen as a bit incompetent.

People think they won’t change anything either, or could even make things worse. A lot of young men also think, even if they don’t see Labour politicians themselves as too “woke”, that they’re scared of causing offence and feel they have to be careful about what they say and do because of that.

I think Labour can still appeal to young men. Labour’s biggest strength is that they are the only people who are actually going to do anything real for young people. But it’s hard for them to communicate this. Just saying “we care about you” doesn’t work because no one believes mainstream politicians anymore.

They need to show, not tell. And they need to be more hopeful about the future. But they also need to show that they understand that young men in particular, often value material success.

In the end, they need to be able to say to young people: “We will make society fair again, so you have a chance to succeed, and no other party is going to be able to do that for you”.

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