At a mere 69 years of age, I am the spring chicken among the founders of Back Young People. Now, a new campaign launched on Monday. Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell is 74, and “happiness guru” Richard Layard is just eight years off a hundred. Ninety-two, still fighting to put wellbeing at the heart of policy-making, which has been his life’s work, and now with special focus on the young.
He it was who contacted me a few months ago, shocked at reports showing Britain’s young people were among the unhappiest in Europe, and wondering what we could do to get politicians to help reverse the trend. This campaign is part of the answer, with the goal of getting all the parties to sign up to specific policy guarantees by the time of the next election (and preferably well before).
So why did we oldies come together to build a campaign aimed at benefiting people at the opposite end of the age scale? Answer: because intergenerational inequality lies at the heart of so many of the problems we face as a country, and if we don’t take seriously the challenges facing young people, Britain’s future will not match the bright and hopeful mood of the bright and hopeful Andy Burnham comms strategy.
We have done, and continue to do, a lot of research and consultation with young people to make sure we are on the right track, and have lucked out with the appointment of Dan Lawes – at 25 he is 67 years younger than Lord Layard – as campaign director.
Our policy asks cover schools, life skills, mental health, tech and AI, access to youth services, and the expansion of apprenticeships, and the launch got a boost from the presence of former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, who will soon publish the second part of his Neets review, looking into the moral failure/economic and social disaster of one million young people not being in employment, education or training.
We have costed the changes we are proposing at around £1bn. I suspect the price of the full implementation of the Milburn review will be much larger. But we really are at the point where failure to invest now will lead to far bigger costs in the future. One million Neets is unsustainable for a country and an economy of our size.
So the generations have to come together on this. Older people are fond of saying – and perhaps even believing – that they don’t get enough respect from the young. Speaking as an older person who wants Britain to be a stronger, better country long after I am gone, I wonder if it isn’t about time older generations started showing greater respect and consideration for the young; or at least greater understanding that they face a plethora of challenges we did not, back in the days of free education, cleaner air, cheaper mortgages, better mental health, and when nobody had ever heard of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.
The OnSide charity runs more than 20 Youth Zones in different parts of the country, and you do not need to spend long in any one of them to see the hugely positive impact they have on the kids who use them, and the communities in which they live. When the Daily Mirror featured a new OnSide Youth Zone in Barnsley, they found children queuing for up to two hours to get in, and linked the establishment of the zone to a dramatic fall in antisocial behaviour in the South Yorkshire town.
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So off I went to see for myself OnSide’s WEST Youth Zone, near White City in west London. Fifty pence to get in, £1 for a hot meal, and brilliant to see so many youngsters enjoying themselves after school, not a mobile phone or a parent in sight. My image of “youth club” was perhaps formed by my own experience, of a draughty hall, a cupboard full of board games, and a dartboard that had seen far better days.
WEST (which has a geographic context as well as the slogan made from those four letters, Where Everyone Sticks Together) boasts an enormous gym, a boxing ring, a 12-metre climbing wall, music and podcast recording studios, a training kitchen, a beauty salon, a sensory room, and to cap it all, literally, a rooftop all-weather football pitch.
Andy Burnham attracts plenty of praise as well as flak for his focus on “little things that make a difference”. One youth club in one area may not be a big thing in the grand scheme of things. But a national network of them would be a big thing, and a big boost to Britain, present and future.
Might I suggest that the prime minister adds a youth club in every postcode to his “growth in every postcode and hope in every heart” mantra?
Still We Run is a song from my favourite Scottish folk band, Skipinnish, which band leader Angus MacPhail says was inspired by my “Forever Young” approach to life. So yes, of course, I had to have a go at the climbing wall, and no, I felt no embarrassment whatsoever at perhaps the most inelegant landing ever witnessed.
Let’s stick with youth, or at least the relative youth of some of the high-profile Democrat politicians who have given the world hope that the Trump era may be coming to an end, and the poison he has injected into politics all over the globe can begin to be drained.
James Talarico, 37. Jon Ossoff, 39. Abdul El-Sayed, 42. Three of the real stars of the midterms.
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, 35. Congresswoman AOC, 37. The fact that I can write AOC with reasonable confidence that you will know who I mean indicates just how high profile this new generation of American politicians has become.
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And here is the great thing about the backlash that we are now seeing against the cruelty and the corruption, the nastiness and the narcissism, of the still-quacking lame duck president… it is largely down to him that these guys have become political figures of global renown and significance.
Of course, they have their own talent… I watched all three of the Talarico, Ossoff and El-Sayed acceptance speeches. They were different in terms of style, tone and content, but all exceptional in their own way.
A big part of their force, however, came from the knowledge we all have that Trump and his machine threw everything they had to defeat them. Losers. Musk spaffed almost half a billion dollars to do the same. Loser.
Not only did these midterm winners have the energy and passion of youth – and by the way I think that word is valid, set against the gerontocracy to which all too many US politicians belong; they also had persevilience pouring out of them. It cannot be easy when you see bottomless pits of money being plundered to aim smears, lies and misinformation at you.
Getting good out of bad, the key persevilient attribute, they all did it, and did it in style. Oh yes, they might have to make it into the paperback!
And it led to my favourite line of the night, from El-Sayed, who rejoiced that “the many had beaten the money”.
Talking of the many versus the money… it looked at one point as though Nigel Farage might be en route to gaining the support of the many. But the money got in the way.
Just like Trump, he thought nobody would mind how much he earned from what was supposed to be a role in public service. And just like Trump, he was wrong.
