What do the radicals of this generation want when they win power? Not what earlier generations wanted.
“… what do the radicals of this generation want when they win power? The success of Syriza, of Podemos in Spain and even the flood of radicalised young people into the SNP in Scotland makes this no longer an idle question. The most obvious change is that, for the rising generation, identity has replaced ideology. I don’t just mean as in “identity politics”. There is a deeper process going on, whereby a credible identity – a life lived according to a believed truth – has become a more significant badge in politics than a coherent set of ideas.”
This is a perceptive comment in a piece in today’s “Guardian” newspaper by Paul Mason, economics editor of Channel 4. I think that we are seeing a serious and sustained loss of support for established political parties (and churches) as we witness a decline of ideology (and theology). Many people – especially young people – no longer have a ‘big picture’ view of the country or the cosmos; instead identity is taking over from ideology.
These trends have massive implications for political programmes and policies. As Mason explains:
“A 25-year-old who has known only temporary work, on an individual, performance-driven salary, is going to find the concept of a wage agreement puzzling. A young person who expects to move jobs, cities and even countries several times over in their working life would, if asked to design a welfare state from scratch, do so in a way that allows people to carry their entitlements with them. And designed from scratch today, by a generation hooked on choice and networks, it is unlikely the NHS or education would come out as monolithic single systems.”
These trends also have enormous implications for political parties and democratic politics. I have written about the challenge to the older democracies here.
June 8th, 2015 at 1:01 pm
I agree with Mr Mason that we are seeing a decline in support for our current batch of political parties. Well who could argue, the evidence speaks for itself. However I strongly disagree with his assertions that “Many people – especially young people – no longer have a ‘big picture’ view of the country or the cosmos; instead identity is taking over from ideology.” The vast majority of British people are actually very clear in their mind about what they want and the “bigger picture”. It looks nothing like either what we have today or the offerings from the main political parties at the recent general election. The problem for most is that British society is so far removed from what they want, it seems far out of reach and they cannot comprehend how to achieve their bigger picture.
Mason’s claims that “A 25-year-old who has known only temporary work, on an individual, performance-driven salary, is going to find the concept of a wage agreement puzzling” are just insulting to our young people and their level of intelligence. It is exactly this kind of negative and insulting rhetoric against society, but young people in particular that only serves to exacerbate the problem. Tell someone you are no good enough times and they will start to believe it. These young people are our future and what they need is support, encouragement, training, confidence building, guidance, assurance and reassurance. But what they need most of all is for messages like that from Mason to stop. As an educated man he should know better.
Likewise Mason’s “And designed from scratch today, by a generation hooked on choice and networks, it is unlikely the NHS or education would come out as monolithic single systems.” I have marched with thousands of young people in the past few months in protest at the governments’ breakup of our NHS. Those that I have spoken to have an excellent level of knowledge about how our NHS has been broken up by the government and like the rest of us at those marches they are angry about it. Those whom I spoke to believe fundamentally on 1 NHS free at the point of need, with no public sector provision of services. So Mason is simply wrong on this point.
I am writing a book at the moment and what my research tells me is that people want a fairer and more democratic society that works for everyone, rather than the richest 1% as is currently the case. They want a welfare state that will look after the sick, disabled and elderly in their time of need. An end to compulsory zero hours contracts and a minimum wage that is equal to a living wage being properly enforced by the government for all workers, as is not the case at the moment are other things people would want. An absolute and complete halt to the sell off of what remains of our public assets is another thing. Some have told me that instead of selling off our shareholding in RBS at a predicted £13billion loss to the taxpayer, the bank should be kept in public ownership and broken up into a network of local banks for local people.
This is just a tiny sample of the feedback I have received from my research and in no way shape or form does it suggest to me that people in Britain don’t know what they want. What it does say is that they know what they want, they just don’t know how to go about getting it.
June 8th, 2015 at 4:23 pm
Interesting views, Damien. However, I suspect that the young people with whom you marched are a self-selecting group and that the young people with whom you are talking for your book are selected by you, so that neither sample is comprehensive or totally representative.
If it is true that most young people want the things you listed, then I would suggest that, broadly speaking, those policies were on offer from the Labour Party at the recent general election but they were not supported in the ballot box.
This might be because of the lack of the ‘big picture’ view. People want a welfare state but too often they don’t want to pay for it. People say they want a fairer society and then oppose a mansion tax or accuse Labour of being ant-business. People say that they want less austerity and then vote for an independent Scotland which would be poorer.
Identity seems to trump ideology.
June 17th, 2015 at 1:04 am
Roger,
Thanks for your comments & feedback. I have not actually selected any of the young people I’ve spoken to and marched with, though do admit, that being we were all marching against austerity & privatisation, it could be argued as an unrepresentative sample, but I did not suggest or claim otherwise.
The research I have conducted for my book has been non selective and just random people both young and old I happened to strike up a conversation with, whether that be friends, people on the tube, work colleagues, on Facebook, twitter etc..
I disagree that labour offered the suggestions I made about what people want at the last election. In fact in my opinion, the labour party is in dire straits precisely it does not offer the policies the party was previously associated with. They certainly did not offer a public owned RBS bank that would be broken up into a network of local community banks, they offered a lite version of the tories austerity program and cuts to welfare budget, Nowhere in the labour party manifesto did it mention halting the sale of public assets, in fact it was new labour who first looked into selling off royal mail when it was last in power. Most importantly in my opinion, labour did not offer a plan to scrap the use of private healthcare providers in our NHS.
We clearly agree that labour were strongly rejected at the last election, but perhaps disagree on the reasons for that. The success of the #milifandom on twitter and huge increase in the number of under 25’s turning out to vote, as well as the more recent campaign for 16-17 year olds to be given a vote in the EU referendum, suggest that young people are not as disconnected with politics as some suppose them to be.