What have the Tories got to offer young people like us?
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Version 0 of 1. Considering we have just gone to war, some might say the Conservative party’s decision to use a band called the Killers for their soundtrack is not in the best possible taste. Perhaps the rousing chorus of “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” is intended to be ironic at Tory conference (surely it should be the other way around?) But then the Conservatives have never been known for their musical taste, as Cameron reminded us when he revealed that as a young man William Hague (“our greatest living Yorkshireman”) owned a solitary Dire Straits record. Do the Tories have anything more to offer young people, besides this and reading Hansard in bed? There is no doubt that Cameron is a decent orator – much better than Ed Miliband – but then again, he is a seasoned PR man. He tells us that he wants to help people “stand on their own two feet”. He feels a deep patriotism for this country, and wants it to be “a Britain that everyone is proud to call home … where hard work is rewarded”. We can smell the imminent policy meat, but we can’t see it yet. Cameron tells us that other parties offer us a “brave new world”, while the Conservatives promise us a much less exciting sounding “real world, but better”. For young people, this means making sure we get a good education and are on the housing ladder. How this is complemented by the commitment that the UK will have the lowest corporate taxes in the G20 is unclear, but it is something to do with “creating decent jobs”, and everyone knows young people love those. Except, of course, those young people under 21 who leave school and go straight on benefits. They will no longer have the option to do this, Cameron says, not because the Conservatives will overhaul the entire education system to ensure that people come out with the necessary skills for paid work (although they say they will do that too), but because they will take the benefit away. Yet again, it is implied that youth unemployment is down to laziness, rather than an absence of jobs. “Earn or learn” is the motto here. But if this wonderful education system the Tories have envisaged is to produce skilled workers, what use is forcing young people to undergo even more education on top of that? To prevent another generation from “rotting” on welfare? When we both graduated into the recession, we did not “rot” on welfare – it provided both of us with the safety net we needed to seek employment. But from our experience, a life on benefits is not something many young people would choose, or have chosen, willingly. If you’re in danger of rotting, though, Cameron has some news for you. He wants young people to get off social media and ask “what their character says about them”, not what can they say in 140 characters. A Conservative government will deliver a guaranteed place for every teenager on Cameron’s new flagship National Citizens’ Service scheme, which puts them to work on things like “clearing wasteland”. Hear that, kids? It’s like community service without even having to go through the bother of committing a crime first! If that’s not what we all dreamed for the “big society”, then we don’t know what is. Cameron’s pledge to increase the tax-free allowance to £12,500 is ostensibly a good policy, especially for young people (when we were job hunting, this was a common graduate starter salary). But research shows it actually only constitutes a marginal benefit to the low-paid, and helps those who are richer a lot more. And as for having the 40p tax rate raised to £50,000, this is unlikely to affect many young people, or indeed any people (it benefits only 15% of the population). We’ll be taking bets on what it is they are going to cut in order to do this, and who these cuts might end up affecting (our money’s on the youngest, poorest and weakest). As far as housing for young people is concerned, Cameron claims his Help to Buy has not created a housing bubble. OK then. He’s made a “renewed commitment to first-time buyers”, provided we are prepared to work hard and save. He informs us that “young people watch Location, Location, Location as a fantasy, rather than a reality”, showing off his well-known affinity with today’s youth and the TV programmes we enjoy. The Tories will build 100,000 starter homes that are 20% cheaper than normal (so still bloody expensive) for first-time buyers under 40. Buy-to-let landlords and “rich foreigners” will at least not be allowed to buy them. It’s a policy that is very similar to Labour’s – in fact, he almost quoted Miliband word for word. This sounds promising, though how we are supposed to work hard and save in the face of rising rents and a cost of living crisis is not addressed. As for Cameron’s pledge of an EU referendum, it will seem irrelevant to the youngsters among us. There is a generation gap here – young people aren’t afraid of the EU, and in fact they can be said to constitute what one Ukip campaigner described as a “demographic timebomb”. Still, at least we can all look forward to the Tories scrapping the existing Human Rights Act and rewriting our fundamental rights in their own image. Who wouldn’t want that for the “real party of compassion and social justice”, after all? |