There is a major generational split in British politics today, Britain has been polarised by voting the split between the generations and who they vote for has never been wider. 62% of young people voted for labour whereas only 27% voted conservatives in the last 2017 General Election, the youth turnout was only 54%  of 18-25-year-olds in comparison to 71% of 55-64-year-olds and 71% of over 65’s. Though the young people who were voting were those with degrees and stable jobs.

”This is not class warfare , this is generational warfare. This administration of old and wealthy people have declared war on young people. That is the real war going on here. And that is the war we need to talk about” – James Carville

One of the hot topics in the media is youth voting and how to engage youths into voting, as they are the leaders of tomorrow are they? Political socialisation has been set up in school, however, this has not increased the youth turnout to vote. Why is the voter turnout so low? it could be due to not many parties using the new media and engaging with the youth, however, it also could be because even though parties such as conservatives and labour have both used the new media using hashtags and engaging with reality TV stars to gain popularity thinking that the youths will passively follow what they are seeing in the media, in young people do not like and do not agree with a party they will not vote for them no matter how much media coverage they have.

Young people fully understand what the parties are are offering they are just rejecting it” – Bruter

however, young people reading the new media, and engaging in politics there has been new troubles being aced then before, with ‘fake news’ it is hard to tell what is the truth and what has been fabricated. 63% of young people access politics through the new media and there has been a decline in the use of traditional media. The new media can open up much debate about politics and reach a wider variety of people, however, one-third of individuals are not sure what is false. Many young people feel left behind in political engagement feeling that politics has not been aimed at them and that there is no voice for them.

Young people continually have a different voice to the rest of the population and they are also the smallest voting group. It is near impossible for young people to make a change in society when they are the only ones voting that way, this could be another contributing factor as to why young people do not vote. The graph below shows the dramatic generational voting split.

young people are seen to have little to no engagement in politics, however, could this be due to quantitative data, in regards to voting, not the engagement of young people. If a young person is under the age of 18 they are unable to vote so won be included in governmental statistics on youth participation in politics. it may be hard for young people to fit in traditional politics into their daily lives, some have been uprooted and moved cross country to university, others have started new jobs and other have started families. They do however take part in politics in other forms, which gets their voice heard in ways political parties do not such as signing petitions, taking part in protests, activities that those do not consider to be political engagement are very much so.

However there is a hunger for change among young people, after seeing the rise in young people voting for the EU referendum and then even bigger increase in young people voting for labour making the government a coalition, this is because once an individual has voted once, they are more likely to vote again. Politicians now need to not just focus on the older generation they need to focus on the younger generation and what will affect them, such as tuition fees and debt, there have been talks recently of how they can help students with tuition and fees such as 2-year courses, however another idea they put forward was to make certain courses cheaper and certain universities cheaper which would just enhance the class divide, it would be based on graduate earnings, the higher the earnings the higher the tuitions and in turn the more valuable the degree, ”setting different fee levels would be a “bad idea” says Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. The government are constantly changing the benchmark for young people and changing how their lives will end up, trialling new things ever so often and not realising the effects that they have left young people to do deal with. It is why many young people do not have faith in the government system.