The political obituaries of David Cameron will no doubt all make a similar case: that he threw away a promising legacy in an EU referendum that has left the country not only in chaos but deeply divided, between north and south, city and town, rich and poor. But there’s another chasm that Cameron has brutally widened: between young and old. And throughout his premiership, the interests of the former have been sacrificed for the votes (and triple-locked pensions) of the latter. So what is Cameron’s legacy for young people?
In so many ways, Cameron’s government has reduced our life chances. They voted to increase tuition fees threefold, leaving many of us saddled with debt and many others priced out of higher education entirely (this from a man who chose to spend his last day as PM visiting a school, to highlight his success in education reform). Help-to-buy and a concentration on short-term growth have pushed house prices even further out of our reach, and – combined with an abject failure to build more homes – dashed the dream of independent, grown-up living for vast numbers of people in their 20s and 30s. As Suzanne Moore has argued, inequality has eroded all the stepping stones to adulthood.
Uncertainty is the disordering force of our lives: should we go to university, will we ever find a well-paid job? The government has continually failed to tackle the effects of casual work and an unstable employment market; the refusal to act on the proliferation of zero-hour contracts is only one example. According to the Office for National Statistics, young people are much more likely to be on such exploitative contracts, leaving us less able to save, make plans, or progress in careers. Six years after Britain came out of recession, youth unemployment is still more than double the general figure. A whole generation is being left out of the recovery Cameron is so proud of.
And then there’s the really big one. In calling the EU referendum, Cameron gambled our future for the sake of uniting his party. In failing to win it, he sold us out for nothing in return. We’ve lost job prospects through the combined effect of a weakened economy and the possible restrictions on freedom of movement. Higher education – our entry pass to the global economy and prosperity – will suffer from a severing of links to universities on the continent, and of course from a withdrawal of EU funding, and we will be further disadvantaged.
Many of my friends enjoyed fantastic educational and cultural opportunities through the Erasmus scheme, which allowed them to spend relatively cheap years abroad in all corners of Europe; the generations of students who come after us may not have such chances. Indeed, the vital chance to travel and learn has been reduced in general as trips to Europe become more expensive. This is a bigger blow than it might appear: such experiences help young people to fight the bias against them in skills and employment.
Cameron has pandered to his party and its core of older voters at the expense of the future. Long after he has cleared out of Downing Street, young people will feel the effects of misguided policies implemented without regard for their effects on a whole swath of society. We have been left with a very rocky outlook, and it is up to Theresa May and her team to help us sort it out. Cameron’s legacy is equally uncertain, but one thing is for sure: the young will not remember him kindly.
