As the flag of the British Workers’ Union fluttered behind him on a stormy June morning, Liam Kehoe went on strike with his colleagues outside the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, demanding better pay for porters, cleaners and catering staff. Their wages have not kept pace with rising living costs, and many say they are living paycheck to paycheck.
Mr Kehoe, 26, serves food at a hospital. On Thursday, the day of Britain’s general election, he plans to vote for the centre-left Labour Party because of the economic situation and the weakened state of the National Health Service, he said.
Reflecting on the lives his parents built on wages earned as nurses and lorry drivers, Mr Kehoe said young people faced much worse prospects after 14 years of Conservative government. “If you go back 30 years, houses were a little cheaper, life was a little easier,” he said. “Nowadays, it seems like you can’t afford anything.”
Polls show that more than half voters under 35 years of age plan to vote for the Labor Party on Thursday, compared with 27 percent of voters over 65. While the gap between young and old in politics is not new, the extent of the divide in Britain in recent years has been extraordinary, with support for the ruling Conservative Party falling sharply in all but the oldest age group, according to recent poll.
Before 2019, the main factor that decided whether people voted for the Conservatives or Labour is incomeMore recently, “age has replaced class as the decisive way people vote,” said Molly Broome, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, a British research institute.
The northern English city of Liverpool has long been a Labor Party stronghold with a proud working-class tradition. Many young people said their loyalty to the centre-left party was bolstered by a feeling that their needs had been ignored by the Conservatives.
Mr. Kehoe and his girlfriend are trying to buy a house. “The housing market is collapsing,” he said. “The whole country is falling apart because this government is doing it for them and not for us. They don’t care about us, the little guys at the bottom.”
Others expressed broader dissatisfaction with a political system that they said failed to meet their needs. Some young people said they would not vote, while others would vote for third-party candidates who have little chance of winning more than a few seats but whose characteristics are more consistent with the Surname.
Experts say much of the political messaging from Britain’s two main parties focuses on the priorities of older generations because they make up a large proportion of the electorate, in part because of demographic changes. They are also more likely to vote: About 96% of people over 65 are registered to vote, compared with 60% of 18- to 19-year-olds and 67% of 20- to 44-year-olds. according to a year 2023 Election Commission Report.
Politicians have defended some policies to support the elderly, even as younger generations face worsening living standards. For example, the “triple lock” pension scheme, introduced by the Conservative-led government in 2011, ensures that state retirement income—similar to Social Security in the US—rises each year in line with earnings growth, inflation, or 2.5% at best.
Ms Broome said while age remained the main dividing factor in support for the two main political parties, there were also divisions among the younger generation. Labor has had a positive shift in the polls among all generations, except millennials who did not graduate from university and those who do not own a home.
“The reality is not that they are more likely to vote Conservative; the reality is that they are less likely to vote,” Ms Broome said.
Owen Burrows, 21, a porter at Liverpool hospital, does not intend to vote, even though this is the first general election in which he is eligible.
“I can’t say who I really agree with, so I really don’t intend to vote,” he said, recalling being “confused” in 2016 when the country voted to leave the European Union.
“With the current state of the country and with the whole Brexit situation, it feels like everything has gone completely wrong,” he said.
Brexit means a lot to many people. In Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle, a former warehouse district with a thriving creative scene, young men skateboard in the evening light. The rhythmic roll of their skateboard wheels echoes off the brightly painted walls.
One of the skateboarders, Joe McKenna, 26, was the first in his family to go to university. In the Brexit referendum, his first vote, he voted to remain, while both his parents voted to leave.
“I think that was the first time I noticed the difference between what my parents thought and what I thought,” he said. “Now, we don’t really talk about it, because it happened and I think they know it’s not a good situation. But I don’t blame them.”
Thinking about the consequences of Brexit, he plans to vote for the Labour Party in the upcoming election.
“I see them as the lesser of two evils,” he said. “A lot of working-class people voted Conservative in the last election because they believed there would be change. And obviously with Brexit, that has changed a lot of people’s views towards the Conservatives.”
Housing is another focus of discontent. Around 70% of young Britons say they believe the dream of home ownership for many of their generation is over. according to a study from the Center for Policy Research, a British research group. And the data backs up that notion: Thirty-nine percent 25 to 34 years old homeownership by 2022-23, down from a peak of 59 percent in 2000.
Even some younger Conservatives, like Olivia Lever, 24, say they feel forgotten in the current campaign. Ms Lever, founder of the Liverpool University Young Conservatives and Director of Blue Beyonda grassroots group of young conservatives, said there was no effort to appeal to the needs of young people.
“In the Conservative Party, for some time, there has been a gap between younger members of the party and older members of the party,” she said. “With this election – where is the growth? Where is the building? Where is the job? How are we inspiring and empowering people?”
Ms. Lever said that many young people have become “completely disenfranchised from politics because it is age-centric,” pointing to a recent survey her group conducted of people Young Conservatives asked them to describe the current campaign. Many responded: “Boomer-ist.”
On the other side of the political spectrum, young people who identify with the progressive left also describe feeling disenfranchised. At the University of Liverpool, a small protest camp against the conflict in Gaza sprang up last month, inspired by similar protests in the United States.
Students and graduates there expressed disappointment that the Labor Party did not immediately call for a ceasefire or condemn Israel’s actions. Aamor Crofts, 21, is studying wildlife conservation and has been camping here since May, planning to vote for the Green Party candidate or an independent candidate.
“I don’t see any of the major parties really representing me,” she said. Young people, she said, have been left to deal with the fallout from Brexit, economic hardship and soaring house prices. “This is not the country we want to inherit,” she said.
