Have you noticed that rather unpleasant odour coming from Westminster? It’s not just sewage; it’s the stench of disingenuousness. Are we really to believe that ‘youth mobility’ is not a good thing? That it could subvert Britishness and that the only option for our young people is ignominious isolation or cosying up to Trump’s USA?
Rejecting youth mobility is bad optics
It is also bad – very bad – politics. It makes no economic sense, either.
As the Office for Budget Responsibility, Bank of England, Institute of Fiscal Studies, and countless reports have concluded: Brexit has bust Britain. What’s more, the housing crisis is widening the generation gap. So why deepen it by denying the potential of youth mobility?
The scheme offers opportunities to exchange ideas. It facilitates learning. It can be fun. It can lead to chance encounters that become important in later working life. The EU recognises this, as do its member governments. All contribute to an array of youth projects designed to enable young people of all ages and incomes to come together and have fun exploring different lifestyles and ways of doing things. EU youth mobility programmes are not ‘just’ for university students.
Why doesn’t the government see the value of youth mobility?
It could be that it is locked into ‘binary’ thinking, believing that there are only ever two choices: we align either with the EU or with the US. That nonsensical approach may be attractive to lobbyists with their own agendas, but it flies in the face of common sense. Worse still, choosing a path that jeopardises the social welfare state – for example in the areas of health and housing – would do us all a disservice. Young people here and in the EU generally do not want their leaders to abandon our values and human rights just because they are inconvenient. They want them to deal with the cost-of-living and housing crises.
The government’s blindness is sometimes presented in terms of election optics. Because youth mobility is poorly understood both within and outside of government, and because it may be misportrayed as elitist, Labour’s seats are thought to be at risk in areas where Reform UK Ltd came second this year in many of the constituencies that Labour won. These are often, but not always, in the Red Wall. The answer to lazy blindness is not to placate the mood of would-be Reform voters – who are not, by and large, exactly young – but to do three things.
What should the government do?
Firstly, understand what makes young people feel unseen and unheard by politicians and local decision-makers, otherwise it risks increasing the disengagement of young people from democratic life. Research shows that a higher proportion of young Brits abstain from voting compared to their EU counterparts. Unfair obstacles such as differential IDs play a part, but the malaise goes deeper and stems from a sense of being excluded and not valued as members of a society hit by the cost-of-living crisis.
Secondly, replace the pervasive sense of not belonging to ‘society’ – as portrayed and defined by the Westminster bubbles – with an understanding of the emotional attachment and needs of those who feel invisible; ignored ‘over there and out of mind’. Statistics and economic facts do not cut the mustard here; they are perceived as irrelevant to the reality of the daily grind
Thirdly, invest in those communities and empower them, and not just by throwing them the occasional, tub-thumping mayor who gives a voice to their needs and aspirations for their regions. Give them the opportunity to look beyond their own streets, regions, and countries, and see what others are doing to tackle shared problems. Mutual understanding is a means of inspiring the change that the ‘invisible’ want.
So it’s not about education, education, education?
Education matters; of course it does. But barriers such as hunger, poverty, high fares, cold, fees, and exorbitant housing costs, inevitably mean that those who would benefit most, all too often lack the wherewithal to access it. That is why in the EU, some states offer free nursery care and free or minimal-cost tertiary education, though this is less common in the US.
Investing in education and making good jobs accessible for young people in our impoverished areas demands more than just rhetoric: it needs joined-up policy-making: implementing a green agenda must be linked to improving infrastructure, transport, and – crucially – affordable housing, as the EU is beginning to recognise. The European Commission has just appointed its first commissioner for housing to address this very issue. And it was Labour’s former allies in Europe who called for this.
How? By treating housing as a social issue that must be solved for the general good of the economy and society, according to the European Group of Socialists in the EU. They want different policy areas to be linked together to address the housing needs of all – planning, regulatory standards, water and energy efficiency, infrastructure investment, competition, urban and climate policies, and reviews of state aid rules.
Access to affordable, well-insulated homes is a priority for us. It’s also a top priority for young people and those with young families struggling to afford rent. Housing matters to us all. In the EU, 19.6% of disposable income was spent on housing in 2022, on average, rising to 38% for those at risk of poverty (defined as having a disposable income less than 60% of the national median income).
According to UK government figures, the average (mean) rent for households in the social sector was £111 per week compared to £232 in the private rented sector – a difference of £121 per week in 2022/23.
Housing presents local problems, and ones that are intrinsically British, owing to the structure of the housing market. But the needs of the UK youth are the same as those of young people in Europe. Why not enable them to share ideas online and face to face about what they want, what does work and what is achievable?
Why not invest in youth mobility to move us all forward?
