1 min read
ByJosh Jackman, Josh Jackman
"If you wanted to remain so much, why didn't you vote?"
This was the question posed to the 64 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds who failed to turn up at the ballot box on Thursday. Since this age group was 75 per cent in favour of Remain, the logic goes, the fate of the UK's EU membership was in their hands.
Bloody millennials, right? Probably too busy taking selfies and Snapchatting and memeing to take part in the democratic process. And then they have the audacity to whine about it!
Except: can you blame them?
This is the generation which came of age watching Nick Clegg go back on his promise not to raise tuition fees, who saw the government ignore their protests about austerity, cuts to university funding, junior doctors, teachers - the list goes on.
In the age of social media, every time a politician lies, it's captured for the whole world to see - in Vines, GIFs and screenshots, it's plastered all over the internet. Instantly.
Or it simply ends up in someone's echo chamber, shared among friends and like-minded people who, one wrongly assumes, represent the wider population.
But at least it provides a check on politicians who otherwise could have got away with outright lies…right?
Nope. Turns out that as well as fuelling a general mistrust of politicians among the people who use social media the most - young people - it also doesn't seem to make a difference.
The Leave campaign made promises about stopping immigration and how the money saved from not being in the EU would be spent, then quickly rowed back on them after the referendum.
On the other side, David Cameron was relentlessly negative and Jeremy Corbyn, champion of the young, faded into the background to the extent that people weren't sure where he stood.
A crucial, complex decision about our future which should have focused on facts morphed into an ugly clash of personalities. Farage vs Cameron, Boris vs Osborne, Gove vs May.
The hate on both sides which turned the contest toxic, which became the exact opposite of the "new kind of politics" promised only recently.
Crushed by Clegg, ignored by Cameron and let down by Corbyn, launched into a referendum over an issue no one seemed to fully understand, in a campaign shrouded by hatred and backbiting with no one to inspire them on either side, young people were asked to decide between two terrible sets of politicians.
And those who did vote, woke up to a country which had let them down once again.
Josh Jackman, 26, is a JC reporter
