The strange rebirth of liberal England

British politics and the young

Young Britons have turned liberal, both socially and economically. Politicians need to get on their side

The Economist

For the past 170 years The Economist has consistently advocated free trade, punctured government bloat and argued for the protection of individual liberties. It has also been consistently disappointed. Irksomely, political parties tend to plump either for economic liberalism or for social liberalism. Sometimes a small party boldly tries to combine the two—and is rewarded by becoming even smaller. In the United States our creed is so misunderstood that people associate liberalism with big government, when it advocates the opposite.

Yet now Britain, The Economist’s home, the land of Adam Smith (on lead guitar), John Stuart Mill (bass) and William Gladstone (vocals), there is reason for hope. Young Britons have turned strikingly liberal, in a classical sense (see article).

They are relaxed, almost to the point of ennui, about other people’s sexual preferences, drug habits and skin colour. Although, like older Britons, they do not think much of mass immigration, they are tired of politicians banging on about it. As for the row over gay marriage, soon to trouble the House of Lords, they can hardly see the problem.

The young want Leviathan to butt out of their pay cheques as well as their bedrooms. Compared with their elders, they are welfare cynics. Almost 70% of the pre-war generation, and 61% of baby-boomers, believe that the creation of the welfare state is one of Britain’s proudest achievements. Under 30% of those born after 1979 agree. The young are deficit-reduction hawks. They worry about global warming, but still generally lean towards Mill’s minimal “nightwatchman state” when it comes to letting business get on with it: they are relaxed about the growth of giant supermarkets, for example.

It’s only Locke ‘n’ roll, but I like it

This is not just the young being the young. Rather, it is a generational change. In 1987 Britons aged between 18 and 34 were less likely than all other age groups to agree with the proposition that benefit cuts would encourage people to stand on their own two feet: now the young are more hard-hearted than most. They are also more socially liberal than were previous generations at the same stage of life.

There are several explanations for this commendable fashion. The young have grown up in a more mixed society. During their formative years they were exposed to the internet—an organ with an inbuilt resistance to government meddling. Perhaps most important, society has become less generous to them. In 1998 a new Labour government abolished student grants and introduced fees of £1,000 (then $1,656) a year. These have swelled to a maximum of £9,000. The loans are on such generous terms that this is still a form of welfare, but it does not feel like it. In 2010 the coalition government abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance, which had been paid to English teenagers from poor families to persuade them to stay in school. The old, by contrast, have been granted more generous pensions, and will shortly be protected against having to sell their houses to pay for residential care. Small wonder they treasure the welfare state.

Young Britons seem unusual. In America the young are noticeably liberal on gay marriage but less keen on abortion (admittedly a subject where liberalism is harder to define). Some polls hint that young Americans are more inclined than their elders to think that the government ought to do more. A French poll suggests les jeunes are becoming less iconoclastic.

Britain’s teenagers and 20-somethings might turn statist when they have children, and more so when their knees give out. They might develop less tolerant views on sex and drugs when their offspring become teenagers. But they will not turn into their parents. Fundamental opinions about society are like bones: they are shaped in youth.

The problem, for those who love freedom, is that the young lack political clout. The average MP is 50 years old; the average councillor is 60; the average member of the House of Lords is 69. The old vote, even in local elections. They dominate constituency associations. They are driving the most disruptive force in British politics: the fast-rising UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants to return Britain to a prelapsarian state where immigration is low, marriage is heterosexual and Europe is on the other side of the Channel.

Hope I die before I pay tax

Still, political parties should heed the young much more than they do. Although people’s fundamental political views do not change much as they age, their propensity to vote does. Today’s distracted libertarians are tomorrow’s dependable voter block. And, to the extent that people’s opinions do shift over their lifetimes, they tend to bend in one direction: towards the views of the young. Everybody has become calmer about homosexuality and more sceptical about welfare over the past few years. But the young were there first. They are political early-adopters and trend-setters.

Far from courting them, the big political parties are running in precisely the opposite direction. Spooked by UKIP, the Conservatives shuffle their feet when the subject of gay marriage comes up. They are preparing to fight the 2015 general election on an anti-immigration platform. Labour has social liberalism to spare. But it has opposed welfare cuts and rediscovered its historical enthusiasm for economic meddling, which it calls “predistribution”. The Chinese leadership quotes Adam Smith more often than Ed Miliband does.

The only politician whose views chime with the liberal young is the hedonistic mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Sterner sorts have a tougher time. George Osborne, the Whiggish chancellor of the exchequer, is loathed by Tories for his social liberalism and by Leviathan’s lackeys for his spending cuts. Nick Clegg, who has tried to steer his Liberal Democrat Party onto classically liberal ground, has even more foes. But these men are not wrong so much as early. They went into politics too soon. One change would help. If 18- to 24-year-olds voted as reliably as the over-65s, it would mean almost 2m more ballots, and politicians would have to pay attention. For the sake of freedom, the young should hurry to the polling station.