Who Will Speak to the Next Generation of Voters?

Over the last handful of years, I’ve probably moderated hundreds of focus groups around the country. Not much can phase me about public opinion. Yet every now and again something happens that makes me sit up and take note.

On one such occasion, towards the end of last year, I was speaking to an unusual group: some of today’s children who will (probably) make up part of the cohort of the youngest voters in the history of British democracy. They might be pre-teens now, but they’ll be 16 by the next election.

At this particular moment in our discussion, we were chatting about political figures that these 12- and 13-year-olds in white working class County Durham did and didn’t trust. In truth, there were very few they could even name. Even the PM was barely recognised. They were more familiar with Nigel Farage and some were able to explain his brand of politics, but even this was passive. This was almost certainly because of the Reform leader’s powerful presence on social media. All quite predictable.

And then, out of the blue, one of the participants mentioned Charlie Kirk. If I am being honest, my team and I hadn’t thought to prompt for him (I wish we had), but at the merest mention of the assassinated right wing activist, the group suddenly became animated. Many of the participants – especially the boys – obviously knew who he was and what he stood for. They respected his “honesty” and his straight talking, contrasting him with the politicians we’d mentioned. None seem to think of him as particularly controversial; just refreshing.

To be clear, they knew much more about a dead US political commentator than Sir Keir Starmer.

This disquieting story points to an important conclusion to the unprecedented Public First research of which this focus group was part. Over the course of last autumn, we ran a series of moderated discussions with Year 8s in County Durham and Bristol to find out what, if anything, these young people, who the Labour government plans to imminently enfranchise, thought about politics. We concluded not that the young voters of 2029 are totally politically disengaged (which might have been a finding) but, rather, they are being politicised outside of what most would understand as the mainstream.

Similarly, I was also slightly taken aback by the full extent to which the immigration debate had taken hold among the young people growing up in a near-monocultural town hundreds of miles from the Straights of Dover. This was by some distance their Number One issue – way more than global warming or other so-called “youth issues”. It was quickly clear that concern over the small boats was being fed to them by both adult family members and social media – and being reinforced by the flags fluttering in most of the streets in their town.

These were young people for whom politics was a very real live issue – but not one that is mediated through the traditional media or mainstream parties. In our discussions, Westminster politicians were basically treated like alien beings. Kemi Badenoch was an unknown. Sir Ed Davey drew similarly blank faces. As I have mentioned, even the Prime Minister faired only marginally better.

In short, the structures, the parties and the personalities of politics – the central pillars of our democracy – meant next to nothing to these young people, but that didn’t mean they weren’t thinking about politics. Indeed, they are almost literally surrounded by it.

What does this all mean for Labour and the next election? The kneejerk conclusion could be that dire warnings of a coming generation of bedroom right wing warriors are true. But I’m not so sure.

The focus group participants were bright and sparky – and not particularly angry. They were certainly not a new generation of keyboard racists, and, it is worth noting, that while they were fluent about what the flag-waving signalled, it left many of them uncomfortable.

Just because they talked about illegal immigration and Charlie Kirk, it didn’t mean they were brainwashed. But it does suggest they were, at least in part, yet to develop any criticality of thinking and, importantly, an understanding of wider political context or the civic life of our country. Of course, this might come in the years between now and 2029, but, for now, it was glaringly absent.

What I think this means, in truth, is that at least in the Red Wall, the newest voters at the next election are unlikely to be much different to the ones that voted in 2019 and 2024. However, Labour – and the wider establishment – do have a small handful of years to work out how to support them to better understand where their political views have come from and the wider context in which the reside.

This presents a challenge both to the public servants who work in our education system and those of us who claim to understand political communication. It is one we must rise to.

For more by Ed Dorrell see The Unnoticed Battle for the Future of Labour’s Public Sector Reform Agenda.

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