EU referendum: why the young won't vote, and don't care anyway
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Version 0 of 1. Over the past three years, while giving an annual lecture on the UK newspaper coverage of the European Union, I have asked my students whether they would vote to leave the EU. On all three occasions, no more than five students have raised their hands. I think it was just three last time around. That’s three out of more than 200 MA journalism students at City University London. Most of them were baffled by the notion of Britain leaving the EU. They were also amazed by the series of newspaper articles I showed them, stretching back many years, which heaped scorn on Brussels and all its works. They genuinely couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Some were appalled by the xenophobia underlying much of the coverage. They laughed at the examples of Euro-myths - the inaccurate and distorted reporting of EU decisions. They cannot identify with an older generation that views the EU referendum as a way to register its opposition to immigration and/or our multi-cultural society. They are Europeans. For them, Britain’s imperial past is part of history, rather than a touchpoint for their current political outlook. Similarly, they are unmoved by the impact of the second world war. That said, it is also fair to say that I detected a considerable measure of apathy about the whole EU topic. It was so far off their radar that the central argument appeared to be irrelevant. So irrelevant, in fact, that I doubt whether most of my former students will bother to vote. Indeed, I doubt if many of them have even registered to vote. And there is the danger for the Remain campaign. It is possible that Brexit campaigners could win by default because many thousands of young Britons have not been been exercised by the debate which is taking place under their noses. Politicians will surely lament this disengagement from what Labour’s Alan Johnson has called, according to the Daily Mirror, a decision that “will define our society for generations.” But will it? All politicians, regardless of which side they support in the referendum, should consider a more profound problem that has also emerged during my 13 years as a journalism tutor: a growing indifference towards mainstream politics and mainstream media. Gradually, and I admit that this is an impression, I have become aware of a deep-seated antipathy towards what students regard as the politico-media elite. Few of them, and it has got fewer as the years pass, read national newspapers, whether in print or online. What’s more: they appear unembarrassed to admit it (and, note, these are journalism students). It means that they are unmoved by the daily “national conversation” that forms the centre-piece of media output, in newspapers and on TV and radio. I accept that a cohort of post-grad students - middle class, well educated, financially comfortable, confident in their own skins - does not necessarily represent wider society. I also accept that people in their early 20s may not yet have developed an interest in politics. Even so, I think there has been a generational shift in terms of political participation. This is the new silent majority, the Britons who use and consume their own media, and who seal themselves off from the noise generated by Westminster and Fleet Street (and broadcast news). Remain or Leave? Do they care enough one way or the other? I don’t think so. |