Its seems almost cliché to state it, but 2020 was the year that Britain realised our society wasn’t working. From the "iron ring" around care homes that was anything but, to our lax border control while the pandemic raged, there were glaring faults that necessitated urgent action.
Eventually, after several hokey-cokey dances with various lockdowns, it looks as if Britain is set to finally see normality again thanks to our "world-beating" vaccine rollout and cautious relaxation of restrictions. As we start to pick through the debris and think about how we rebuild from here, where better to start than repairing the social contract with the young people of the UK?
Revellers at the Circus Nightclub at Bramley-Moore Dock, Liverpool, for a Covid safety pilot event attended by around 3,000 people at the indoor venue.
Richard McCarthy
For people of an older generation, the broad economics of life played out in a predictable, but stable way — go to school, get a job, earn enough to buy a house, raise a family. But now in 2021, even if you go to university, earn higher than the national average wage and live within your means, these basic financial milestones are still hopelessly out of reach for many young Britons.
Add into this the unique effects of the pandemic on young people, a group who are overrepresented in insecure rental housing, insecure low-paid jobs and had a prime year of their life taken away, and it’s not hard to see why so many are disaffected by the current system.
Posters referencing Covid-19 and a rent strike in Bristol as the UK enters the second week of lockdown due to the global coronavirus pandemic.
Ben Birchall
For far too many of my generation, it’s far too expensive to start a family and achieve the stability that our parents took for granted. This was true before the pandemic, and it’s especially true now, with young people feeling the brunt of redundancies and furlough from their already precarious jobs. While many older people with more secure jobs and families relished the opportunity to work from home and avoid hours of commuting, 20-year-olds craned their necks over desks in tiny, rented kitchens because they had no other choice.
There are those who say that my generation is ungrateful, that we want things handed to us on a plate without working hard, but I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that. All young people want is the same opportunities people had 40 years ago, the same freedoms to get on in life and the same stability to put down roots.
But this is not a purely selfish argument, it’s also smart politics. The government has a huge majority, buckets of unspent political capital and an image problem with young voters. Why not kill these three sizeable birds with one stone, and start enacting reforms that make it easier for young people to get on?
The government could start by ripping up this country’s archaic planning laws, they could make it easier for companies to open offices across the UK, they could simply have the long-term vision and ambition to try something new. And after the year that young people have had, why not?
