I’m the only 18-year-old Tory in the village, and it’s often an unpleasant experience. At school, I was half-jokingly called a fascist by my politics teacher after expressing my enthusiasm for welfare reform. During Michael Gove-bashing lunches in the sixth-form common room, I sat in silence. Occasionally, filled with missionary zeal, I managed to get someone to extol free schools, but their overarching opinions on evil Conservatives always remained unchanged.
When I asked what the Tories meant to them, my friends’ responses were revealing. “I would never vote Conservative,” said one, “because I don’t think they value society. They believe in a world where it’s every man for himself.” When I asked what the party’s vision for Britain entailed, another told me it was “less of a priority to help people with less money”, while several commented on a willingness to “hurt people who need help most of all, just to pull in a few extra million”. Immigration was also mentioned, with one friend saying that the Conservatives are “obsessed with keeping foreigners out of the country”.
Then I asked about the Left, and the tone changed. “Left-wing people put a lot more value on making a world where everyone has the same opportunities for happiness,” I was told. Labour, someone said, “don’t think your background should influence what you do in life”. My friends were well versed in the doctrines of Left-wing idealism, but no one could tell me a single Right-wing idea for improving society.
Still, isn’t socialism something that everyone flirts with, then grows out of? Well, actually, no. In 1983, voters under 24 were only 2 per cent less likely to vote Conservative than those aged 25-34. In 2010, there was a bias in Labour’s favour, despite voters as a whole being likely to vote Tory.
What’s changed is not just the faces at the top of the Labour Party, but what young people are being taught. Indeed, what the exam board Edexcel has to say on the subject of Conservative ideology in its most recent A-level Government and Politics syllabus is downright scandalous. Alongside some recognisable Tory tenets – such as “reform is preferable to revolution” – we were taught that the Conservative viewpoint consists of a “fear of diversity” and support for “social and state authoritarianism”. It views people as “limited, dependent and security-seeking creatures” and supports “resurgent nationalism… insularity and xenophobia”. The equivalent entry on socialism contains such feel-good phrases as “social stability and cohesion, social justice, happiness and personal development” and doesn’t get any darker than a perfunctory mention of “conflict as a motor of history”. Which one would you pick?
The actual marking schemes, used in real exams and deciding students’ real results, are even worse. The “correct” answer as to why Conservatives might wish to alleviate poverty is out of “a pragmatic concern… in the interests of the rich and prosperous”. Authority is valued because it ensures individuals “know 'where they stand’ and what is expected of them”.
Not one of the five suggestions given as a potential answer to the question “Why has the Coalition government tried to reform the benefits system?” mentions improving lives by freeing people from the welfare trap; four are variations on “cutting costs”. The marking scheme for the question “ 'The Coalition government’s deficit-reduction programme goes too far, too fast. Discuss” provides nine bullet points in support and one against: hardly a discussion. But if teenagers didn’t regurgitate this stuff, they wouldn’t have got any marks.
So when my friends think about politics, they’re just following the script. If the Tories are to win back the youth vote, they need to try harder to match the utopianism of Left-wing politics with an exhilarating vision of their own. But it’s a hopeless battle if 18-year-olds join the electoral roll already indoctrinated. The only saving grace, at least among my peers, is that most of them don’t care enough about politics to take in the propaganda.