Brexit: “We’ve Been Given a Future Which We Don’t Want”
On Thursday, the 23rd of June 2016, the people of Great Britain were given the opportunity to vote in a referendum to decide whether we should stay in the European Union or leave it. We chose to leave.
While you would assume the majority vote to leave would suggest that we are a Country united behind our decision. It is far from the case. The vote to leave forced David Cameron to step down as Prime Minister. Political parties are on the verge of implosion. According to The Independent, the number of reported hate crimes has increased by 57%, and we haven't even left the EU yet.
(Full story from The Independent below:)
Reports of hate crime have risen 57 per cent in the aftermath of the EU referendum vote, according to the National…www.independent.co.uk
One of the main issues coming out of the referendum is that young people, the people most affected by the vote to leave didn’t actually vote to leave. Stats have shown that 71% of those aged between 18 and 24 voted to remain in the EU. Whereas 64% of people aged 65 and over, the demographic who are least affected by the outcome of the referendum, voted to leave. Their votes carried more weight in the final outcome as more people within the 50–64 and 65+ age groups turned out to vote than those within the 18–24 and 25–50 groups.
(Data sourced from YouGove. See link below for a further breakdown of the EU Referendum results:)
The 18–24 demographic has to be considered the ones most affected by the decision to leave as the UK’s relationship with Europe directly impacts on future career paths and opportunities. Due to this, there is a lot of anger from young people towards the politicians who made false promises to secure votes to leave the EU.
Many people across the UK voted to leave because of promises made by the Leave campaign to give the money we pay the into EU directly to the NHS. That promise was broken the morning after the Referendum.
Conversely, the remain campaign was accused of fear-mongering without really saying much at all of the benefits of remaining in the EU. It’s hardly surprising then that many people have said that they didn’t vote because they had no idea what to vote for.
Remain voter Matt Payne,20, a Project Management Apprentice and Musician from Barrow-in-Furness (a notoriously working class town who voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU) sat down with me to discuss how he feels the Referendum and subsequent fallout has effected young people’s trust in politicians:
Matt’s brother Adam Payne is a Political Reporter for the Business Insider UK based in London. He also shared his thoughts on the fallout of the Referendum:
“Despite being billed as a healthy democratic exercise, the EU referendum left the public more distrusting and sick of politicians probably than ever before — especially young people. Generally, the British youth is a liberal, outward-looking bunch, which feels like the referendum was just another case of its future is being decided by an older generation which holds a totally different worldview. “Of course, the onus is on young people to put their votes where their mouths are, and perhaps if more voted the outcome of the EU referendum would have been different. Yet, this conclusion lets politicians off the hook for what was an utterly appalling referendum. Both campaigns were astonishingly dishonest, meaning that the young people who wanted to be informed were given information which was manipulated, cherry-picked, or in some cases blatantly untrue. “The EU referendum turned young people off politics for good and I’m really not sure if you can blame them.”
From this, it is quite obvious to see that there is a suggestion of a clear divide between Politicians and young people in the UK.
The feeling that young voters were being ignored by politicians was further confounded on an episode of Question Time that aired 2 weeks after the referendum, when Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat literally ignored a question from a young woman and chose to answer a previous question from an older person. (See link below. Incident happens 41 minutes into the program).
Considering it is young people who will be deciding which political party is in power for decades come, you would expect to see Politicians reaching out to them. It is clear from the fallout of the EU Referendum that that is certainly not the case. At this time it seems that many politicians are only focused on stabbing their fellow MP’s in the back. The Labour Party for example (who since the referendum, have seemed to spend every minute bickering amongst each other) could find themselves in a much better position to challenge new PM Theresa May’s leadership if they were able to win over a generation of young people who still don’t know what side of the political spectrum they sit on. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have them on side come the next general election.
And while it remains to be seen what effect Brexit will have on the UK moving forward (although it’s not even certain that we’ll actually leave yet, but that’s another story entirely), there is clearly work to be done by politicians to regain the confidence and support of a generation of young people who will be the ones to decide the future leaders of the U.K. While some say ignorance is bliss, for some MP’s, their ignorance towards young people could cost them their seats in parliament.
Check out some of Adam Payne's work for the Business Insider UK by following the link below:
