26-year-old Ella Glover says she has always been “very politically engaged” but felt “disillusioned” in the run-up to the July 4 election.
“I’ve always voted Labour, and Jeremy Corbyn gave me a lot of hope, but I don’t align with the current Labour Party,” she explains, adding that she’s uninspired by Keir Starmer’s centrist ideology. “I’d prefer something more radical, more left-wing,” she says, citing the housing crisis and the mounting cost of living as two of the biggest issues facing Britain in 2024. In the end, she voted Green.
Charlie Ward, 18, feels similarly disappointed with mainstream politics.
“I’m done with the broken parties who care more about fighting themselves than fighting for the country’s future,” he says. Like Glover, Ward is also worried about rising living costs and the dearth of affordable housing. But unlike Glover – who believes that upping taxes and, specifically, introducing a wealth tax – could raise the money needed to address these issues, Ward believes the solution lies elsewhere.
“Reform pledged to raise the personal tax allowance, and that was the only policy out there to help working people,” he says. He adds that he believes immigration is having a “knock-on effect” on housing and that the “endless pursuit towards net zero by the other parties is damaging British industry.”
And so, in the recent general election – the first of his adult life – Ward voted for Nigel Farage’s right-wing party, Reform.
Gen Z is often stereotyped as “tofu-eating wokerati,” and it is true that young people are overwhelmingly more likely to vote for progressive parties. However, Ward’s support of Reform is in keeping with broader political trends that suggest young men are becoming more right-wing.
“I will ask my dates straight up about their politics on the first date."
Research outlined in the Financial Times earlier this year suggested that men and women across the world are becoming increasingly split on political issues, with UK women aged between 18 to 30 roughly 25 percentage points more liberal than their male counterparts.
Data collated in the aftermath of the recent election paints a similar picture: 12% of men aged between 18 and 24 were twice as likely to vote Reform than their female counterparts, while 23% of women aged 18 to 24 voted Green compared to just 12% of men the same age.
In the UK, many young people like Glover and Ward are dissatisfied with the two-party system. A recent YouGov poll found that just 49% of under-30s voted for Labour or the Conservatives in the election, with the majority voting for smaller, fringe parties like the Greens and Reform.
“There’s a palpable desire among most young people for drastic change – on both the left and right.”
“Fundamentally, I don’t believe that the Tories or Labour offer what young people need,” says 19-year-old Nathan Hobbs, a young Reform supporter. “To me, Reform’s manifesto was the only one that was offering real, bold action.”
Seun Ige, 19, also wants to see radical change – although, unlike Hobbs, she voted Green. “Their urgency, as compared to other parties, to transition to a zero-carbon society – even if it’s idealistic – is appealing, especially as I live in a heavily polluted area of London,” she says. She adds that “their Palestine solidarity campaign, commitment towards housing and transport, and right to roam policies” also won her over.
Despite their differing ideas on the sort of reforms they’d like to see, there’s a palpable desire among most young people for drastic change – on both the left and right.
Finding your political voice at nineteen is not easy, particularly if you’re a woman.
“On a global scale, we are seeing a huge volatility in politics, with the only common denominator being a rejection of the status quo,” explains Dr Jilly Kay, senior lecturer in Communication and Media at Loughborough University. “At some level, people of all genders and backgrounds are responding to the same thing – the economic, ecological and social instability and despair of our current capitalist regime.”
Dr Kay adds that growing support for right-wing parties like Reform among young men can be understood as part of a reactionary response to this mounting instability and social atomisation.
“Platforms can funnel people to the alt-right by showing them increasingly reactionary and misogynistic content to keep them on the platform.”
“For complex reasons, it seems that more men’s anger and frustration is being channelled in a reactionary direction than women’s – and for that, we need to look to cultural reasons and the resurgence of misogyny in our networked culture,” she says.
In recent years, there’s been a marked backlash to feminism, often stemming from right-wing figures and movements. Notably, speaking on a podcast in February, Farage described self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate as a “very important voice” for young men who are being “emasculated” by society.
This chimes with Ward, who says he believes there’s a sense it’s become acceptable to “attack young men”, with modern culture perpetuating the idea that “going to the gym or having a few pints are somehow traits of toxic masculinity.” So, he says, “many young men will see someone like Nigel saying it’s OK to have fun in life and connect with that.”
Talking about misogyny is important, but how we talk about it is even more so.
Glover refutes the idea that feminist movements are “attacking” men – but can understand how people (and specifically young men) come to this conclusion. “If you speak to the average person who’s interested in feminism, they’ll talk about how the patriarchy affects men,” she says. But she adds that this is “usually left out of the conversation online,” and as a result, she’s hesitant to “shame people” for misunderstanding ideas which aren’t fully explained in snappy social media posts.
Ige agrees. “This gender divergence is exacerbated by algorithm-driven social media platforms that create echo chambers, reinforcing gender-specific biases,” she says. Concerningly, in these increasingly segregated echo chambers, inflammatory takes are often amplified over more nuanced, measured opinions.”
Algorithms tend to reward content that is ‘transgressive’, and research shows that anger is the emotion that circulates most readily within social media networks,” says Dr Kay. “Platforms can funnel people to the alt-right by showing them increasingly reactionary and misogynistic content to keep them on the platform.”
Notably, Reform’s success in winning over a significant share of young male voters has been partly attributed to their impressive TikTok presence. On the video-sharing app, Reform has amassed 236,000 followers – just 2,000 shies of the Labour Party’s 239,000 – and has the best rates of engagement and views of all other parties.
It’s easy to see how a young, impressionable man might offhandedly like one video of Farage swigging a pint and be subsequently targeted with innumerable videos from the Reform Party account and other, more extreme right-wing content.
“It is extremely common in these online spaces to see feminism blamed for economic ills – for example, the lack of secure jobs is blamed on women’s entry into the workforce, and social disintegration is blamed on the fact that women are not fulfilling their ‘natural’ duties as wives and mothers,” Dr Kay says.
Why won't the PM scrap this inhumane policy?
While polarisation is dangerous in and of itself, it’s also worth acknowledging that in the UK, the right has the potential to do more harm than the left.
In the run-up to the election, a whole host of Reform candidates and supporters were hit with a slew of sexism and racism allegations. One candidate, James Gunn, stated in an interview with The i that “girls should be aware promiscuity is not attractive” and that women cannot “behave in the same way” as men. On another occasion, a canvasser for the party, Andrew Parker, used a racist slur while speaking about former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. While Farage condemned the remarks as “appalling”, at the same time, he implied that Parker was a “paid actor” hired by Channel 4 – something the channel strenuously denies. Parker said he was “set up and set up good and proper”, was a “total fool”, and has learned his lesson.
Still, we shouldn’t rush to sneer at or berate young Reform voters. In reality, many of them share concerns with those of us on the left: whether it’s housing, the cost of living, or social atomisation more broadly. Nor should we be too totalising when it comes to assuming that all young men are right-wing and all young women left-wing.
“While we are seeing this gendered divergence at the moment, it’s really important that we don’t lose sight of the fact that many women are playing a significant role in the rise of the far right – just look at France and the frightening power of Marine Le Pen,” Dr Kay says.
Ultimately, if the new Labour government doesn’t want to risk losing any more young voters to fringe parties on both the left and right, then they should come up with some exciting, radical ideas to win them back. As Dr Kay says: “What we need is an alliance of people from all genders and backgrounds to channel the growing sense of dissatisfaction and anger at the status quo in a liberatory – rather than reactionary – direction.”
