How We Can Win Over Britain's Youth
The continent's right-wing youth prove there is more to youth Wokeness in Britain than indoctrination and censorship. Here's how we could get them on side.
I’ve spoken a bit about how the youth in continental Europe are just as, if not more, likely to vote for populist right parties than previous generations. This is surprising for us in Britain, because it is so widely stated that the young are the most Woke, unfortunately even confirmed by those among us like Eric Kaufmann. We therefore take it for granted that this is an inevitability.
But of course it isn’t. It isn’t even a cross-Anglosphere phenomenon. In Canada, most young people support the Conservatives, who under Poilievre are starting to become a more robust party of the right, though we will see what he is like in office.
All of this suggests that the reason why the youth are disproportionately Woke in Britain and the United States, though I will be focusing on Britain today, is not just brainwashing and Big Tech censorship, though that unquestionably is a factor. Germany’s ‘Woke indoctrination machine’ is far more pervasive than it is anywhere in the Anglosphere, with children literally taught from birth that to be German is to be evil because they will forever be apologising for the crimes of Hitler; yet despite all of this, and despite the party being constantly classed as ‘fascist’ by the media, Alternative for Germany (AFD) is the most popular party amongst young people.
Young people in the West have an instinctive desire to not follow their elders and what they promote. Whilst sometimes classed as a ‘boomer myth’, the counter-cultural appeal of nationalist right politics in Germany today prove that it can go the other way.
So there must be other factors in why Britain’s Zoomers lean towards Wokeism and the left, instead of joining their continental peers, than just indoctrination and censorship.
In this article I’ll be listing various factors, other than Woke narrative control, that influence youth Wokeness; tuition fees, Brexit’s end to freedom of movement interfering with young people’s freedom to travel, the high cost of living, climate change denial from right-wing parties, the draconian restrictions on freedom during Covid that no party has appealed to young people on, general fatigue of the party in power, and the unattractiveness of the term and aesthetic of ‘conservative’ to young people (Canada not withstanding). I will then do a segment explaining how the Woke left, and by extension the left today, was able to capitalise on these concerns and how the right, including the non-Conservative Party right, was not. Finally, I will talk about how this might be changed, and write some suggestions for a ‘youth manifesto’.
Tuition Fees
In the 2010 British election, a phenomenon called ‘Cleggmania’ was described by the media commentariat around Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, and his pledge to abolish tuition fees.
Contrary to common perception, it was actually Tony Blair who brought in tuition fees, not the Conservatives. The rationale was that universities were underfunded because more and more students were attending university since the abolition of the Grammar School system, so a loan-system which was available to all and only paid back on the basis of ability to pay, made sense to government bureaucrats who were hearing the cries of the university lobby talking about ‘soft power’ and ‘world renowned universities’.
Originally, it was £3000 a year, which was unpopular amongst young people but far less of a scary figure than the current £9000 a year.
The Liberal Democrats were once a real third contender in British politics, and were not the lame joke they are today in the 2000s. Nick Clegg was quite economically right-wing on a lot of issues but he was popular amongst young people solely because of this pledge on tuition fees.
However, when the Lib Dems went into coalition with the Conservatives, their pledge went out the window. Not only did they not end tuition fees, they agreed for them to be TRIPLED.
Nick Clegg says that ‘he was persuaded’ by the ‘impartial’ (absolutely not, universities aggressively lobbied for the increase) Browne Review wanting increased tuition fees, again talking about the ‘desperate need for universities to retain their international competitiveness’ and about the greater importance of the ‘pupil premium’. However, this was rightfully seen as an outrageous betrayal of their young voter base, and the Lib Dems have never since regained the support they once had in the 2000s, rightfully being seen as an opportunistic, slimy party with no convictions whatsoever.
This gravely demoralised students, until Corbyn came onto the scene. Part of Corbyn’s immense youth appeal once again was the pledge to abolish tuition fees.
The popularity of ‘economically left-wing’ ideas goes a large way at explaining why young people are culturally left-wing. If you offer to people a convincing economic programme that speaks to their material needs, they are more likely to adopt your values on cultural issues, and this was exactly what happened with Corbyn.
After Corbyn’s defeat in 2019 the economic leftist portion of that fusion was dropped, but because they had grown up associating people who were culturally left-wing with people who also spoke to their material needs, they hung onto those cultural values.
The tuition fees abolition proposal has now gone off the agenda, the only party still supporting it are the Greens, which go some way to explaining their disproportionate youth support.
However, there’s nothing inevitable about right-wingers supporting tuition fees. Remember that it was built off two ideas we reject: British soft power and the need to keep universities ‘world renowned’ (at spreading degeneracy to the children of elites of all nations), and ‘university for all’. The universities do not deserve the generous amounts of funding they say they need, and the Blairite vision of everybody going to university is both a cultural and economic catastrophe.
Right-wing parties also manage to afford freebies for the elderly, like the triple pension lock and now the quadruple lock, despite the strain on public finances. They do this because they realise their only voters at this point are elderly people, but they seem not to have noticed that elderly people will be dead in a few decades at most. Their constant appeasement of the elderly at the expense of the young is an enormous own-goal. I’d argue that because they dictate the future of a nation, if you have a choice between losing an election but with most young people supporting you, and winning an election with only the elderly supporting you, the former is more valuable.
Tuition fees are only one example of a broader problem, there is always more money to be thrown at pensioners but never enough for young people. It’s things like this which should be so obvious an explanation for youth Wokeness; the Woke parties are the only parties that are remotely interested in getting their vote.
We should wipe off all student loan debt and abolish tuition fees (potentially replacing it with a graduate tax), but fund this by rapidly downsizing the university sector, and making it only for the top 10% of men and the top 10% of women, which will kill elite overproduction.
We also need to give a convincing alternative to university for those who don’t go; which still allows them to live the ‘uni lifestyle’ of living away from home and having parties, but which leads them directly to employment instead of indoctrinating them with Wokeism. The whole conservative ‘do an apprenticeship’ is a complete failure because it fails to recognise why most young people want to go to uni; it’s not to get a degree, but to live the hedonistic dream they were promised throughout their teenage years.
Brexit and End of Free Movement
They’ll never admit it, but as the continent turns to the right and Britain is about to see Woke turbocharged, many right-wingers, who throughout the 2010s saw Brexit as a proxy for the culture war, are secretly wishing we’d stayed.
I have no love for the EU as an institution, it is an unaccountable, globalist, and Woke entity. But Brexit had no benefits the way it was implemented. It was engineered by people who, from the very beginning, had in mind a socially liberal, globalist Britain that would depart from the ‘hardline nationalist turn’ of the continent they predicted. Dominic Cummings said of such, as per his Wikipedia article:
We have replaced overwhelmingly White Christian immigrants who assimilated and were indistinguishable from native Brits (aside from their last names) in a single generation, with non-White immigrants who are far less productive, more likely to be criminals, and are culturally incompatible with indigenous British culture. And indeed, this was preferred by the Brexiteers, even Nigel Farage.
Whilst Boris Johnson pitched himself as a ‘British Gaullist’, in truth he was completely committed to the ‘Global Britain’, ‘Open Borders with the Third World’ version of Brexit, for which he completely betrayed his voter base.
Sure, hypothetically Brexit would give us more opportunities to resist Woke imposition, but how come Hungary is able to be anti-Woke whilst in the EU, whilst we seem incapable of it outside the EU? It suggests that the EU wasn’t the majority of the problem.
Again, this isn’t to say I like the EU. But my problems with it had very little to do with freedom of movement (other than stopping non-White, Muslim immigrants from claiming asylum through Schengen, that we weren’t even a member of). Rather they are due to the unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels, that imposes Woke neoliberalism on its member states, like how it cuts off funding from Hungary and basically engineered the recent election outcome in Poland.
And it’s here where young people are right to be angry. To give an example, my sister had to go through mountains of paperwork to work in Germany as an au pair, when previously she could have just worked there for as long as she wanted, completely visa free.
They’ve lost an enormous privilege, to be able to live and work in Europe, and gained… what exactly? Even more immigration than before, just non-Whites instead of Whites?
The association between Brexit and anti-Wokeism has done a huge amount to alienate young people, who stood to benefit the most from EU free movement, many of them just coming of the age where they could utilise those freedoms. Of course they’re going to turn to the values of the people who advocated against this.
I’m not saying re-join the EU, it’s politically impossible at this point and also undesirable, as we’d have to join the Euro and the EU violates national sovereignty even without the Euro. However, the ‘freedom of movement’ was one of the best parts of it.
A right-wing government should consider joining the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), or creating its own agreement with the EU that allows freedom of movement without formally re-joining the bloc.
We should only do this if we can also leave the European Convention of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Istanbul Convention. It may be that we can’t join one whilst leaving the other, in which case it is better to leave ECHR, because it was institutions like that which were the problem with the EU, not the freedom of movement between fellow White, Christian countries.
But we should do everything we can to restore a lost freedom of young people, not further put up barriers. Negotiations should happen to enable us to get the ‘four freedoms’ (including and especially movement) without following ECHR. A lot of ECHR rulings are used as an excuse by the Deep State who were going to obstruct certain policies anyway. Again, Hungary is a member of both the EU and ECHR, yet ignores the rulings of both, with the solidarity funds the only leverage the EU has (too much).
Rejoining EFTA but leaving ECHR (or developing a means of circumventing it and making the European Court of Human Rights powerless over British law) would be the best option, at both giving us the means to implement anti-Woke policies as well as giving young people the freedom to travel whilst simultaneously closing the door on non-White immigrants.
Cost of Living
The ruling Conservative Party has also done absolutely nothing to help young people with the cost of living, particularly on housing, continuing to prioritise the interests of the elderly and NIMBYs over the interests of young people.
When Liz Truss tried to liberalise planning restrictions, one of the few good things she tried to do, the NIMBY MPs immediately stopped her. These Tory MPs only have the interests of their local boomer pensioners at heart and not that of the wider country.
Young people in Britain are not able to have the independence previous generations enjoyed, not able to move out from their parents until later and later in their lives, due to a misguided education policy which doesn’t give students good jobs when they graduate and the cost of housing. They’ve let foreign buyers speculate on property and properties to remain vacant whilst doing nothing to increase supply.
We can easily link this to immigration as well. A major reason for the skyrocketing cost of housing is simply that there is too much demand from immigration. YIMBYism and immigration restriction isn’t an either or, the best approach, and the one that can most connect with young people, is combining both.
Being able to communicate why immigration puts pressure on housing costs effectively will get young people persuaded by our message thinking: ‘this makes sense, so why are we constantly called racist for wanting to reduce immigration?’ We talk about the material issues first, and let them see how the Woke are dismissing their concerns because they care more about immigrants than they do the native population, using our demonisation as proof that we are right, and a genuine threat to the status quo.
Meanwhile, the lack of development of infrastructure like nuclear power has led to more expensive energy costs due to Russo-Ukrainian War and net-zero policies which don’t solve the problem of climate change in the most effective way. This is something all groups are suffering from,
Climate Change Denial
Somewhat running contrary to this, is that the right, even more so Reform than the Conservatives, are pro-climate change denial. They take fossil fuel company bribes and it’s immediately apparent. Virtually none of this ‘anti-net-zero’ is organic, it’s all Koch Brothers money who care more about their bottom lines than the welfare of the planet.
Particularly in Britain, where we love the natural world, climate change denial is toxic. Young people are right to be fearful about climate change, but the Green Parties are terrible at solutions, for instance with the German Greens putting phasing out nuclear above phasing out coal.
Boris Johnson initially seemed to know how to combine being a ‘green conservative’ with being anti-Woke. However, the fact he increasingly capitulated to Woke on issues like LGBT, as well as overseeing record-immigration levels, undermined his ‘green conservatism’ and made him just a liberal conservative. It is vital that when right-wingers engage on climate issues they aren’t actually signing off on Wokeism.
Unfortunately, in large part due to criminal fossil fuel companies bribing right-wing politicians, environmentalism is seen as ‘Woke-coded’. But this wasn’t always the case. The right-wing can make a choice to re-engage in solving climate change, but maintain that our solutions, like artificial meat, incineration to solve landfill, increased use of GMOs, and rapid investment in nuclear power are better than the Green left’s solutions of sacrificing Western living standards in favour of the ‘global South’ and being ‘natural’. The Dissident Right seems to have adopted a lot of the crank environmentalism (anti-vax, anti-artificial meat, etcetera) that traditionally defined left-wing environmental activism, whilst ironically the left has embraced more scientific solutions.
We shouldn’t reject Net-Zero, but we should do it better, in a way that doesn’t increase the cost of living. Ending being on the fossil fuel payroll would be a price worth paying, as a lot more Elite Human Capital will be willing to engage with us, knowing we aren’t nature-haters and Koch Brothers-backed turbochargers of global heating. The ‘climate change denial’ faction of the Right, that unfortunately is hugely influential in Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, really is just poisonous and needs to be kicked out. Marine Le Pen made a very good decision when she decided to reject climate change denial, with National Rally one of the best populist-right parties when it comes to environmental issues, which may explain why young people are so willing to give it a hearing.
Draconian Covid Restrictions by a Conservative Government
I remember being at university during the Covid lockdowns. There was a real spirit of youthful rebellion. We all partied despite the Covid restrictions which we rightfully saw as an grave injustice and totally corrupt. Many attractive women I knew actually refused to get vaccinated, which was something which even I disagreed with.
In Canada, polls show that young people opposed the lockdowns more than other generations. This is entirely understandable; they were yet another example of the elderly being put before the welfare of the young.
Yet UnHerd reports that British young people generally supported lockdown in the years after it happened. Why might this be the case?
This certainly wasn’t my experience, where very ‘normie’ people were furious with how their futures were being robbed. Here we were, finally getting the independence we had craved during our teenage years, only to have it snatched away by overzealous government bureaucrats. I had to prematurely finish sixth-form college, which I found very upsetting as I was starting to become a popular person; I will forever be bitter that Covid happened just at the point of my life when I started to feel confident in myself.
So why do the polls reflect this? I think it is because the opposition parties at the moment are all to the left of the current government, who don’t affirm those concerns, whereas in Canada the main opposition is to the right.
Part of this is inevitable as the ‘party of the right’ is in power. But parties like Reform also did not make an effort to reach out to young people either, so their base was limited. The ‘party of the right’ being responsible for imposing such draconian restrictions, and the right-wing opposition far outnumbered by the left-wing opposition and also unappealing on a whole bunch of other issues, most notably it being a rebrand of the Brexit Party, like I explained above.
Not all conservatives did this, Miriam Cates first came to my attention as a champion of the ignored youth during the pandemic, but they were too few, with the majority of all political parties putting the elderly first in one way or another.
If Reform had gotten its act together earlier, and emerged as a major opponent of the lockdown for hurting the interests of young people, whilst keeping focused on the facts and the scientifically grounded lockdown opposition (which to be fair, the party platform was not anti-vax), then I think this would have led to young people supporting it, though it would be bogged down by its association with Brexit. The Canadian Conservative’s success on this issue, both following and shaping public opinion of young people as the opposition, proves how this might have happened.
Fatigue of Fake Conservative Party in Power
It’s also natural that if a party has been in power for over a decade, people who grew up under that government are going to want a change, both in government but also in the ideology.
It doesn’t matter if this conservative government was not truly conservative, the bottom line is that they associate right-wing politics with this government, a government that has not done anything for them.
Sure, in continental Europe populist-right parties have often risen to replace mainstream conservative parties, but the dynamics in a proportional representation system are different; there is a wider variety of parties to choose from. Populist right parties popular with young people are very rarely just the traditional party of the right having turned to populism, with Fidesz in Hungary maybe an exception to this.
So in some ways, this is inevitably the electoral cycle. But it would be different if they felt that this government had done something for them, and was promising them something more. In reality, this has been a fake conservative government that has offered them nothing, but they associate this with all right-wing politics, so they are inclined towards the left-wing opposition, which in this country is Labour and the Greens.
Young People Want ‘Progress’ (However Defined), Not ‘Conserve-atism’.
As I’ve spoken about at various points, to be ‘conservative’ means pro-status quo and/or backwards-looking. As the only constant is change, the ideology which most convincingly defines what ‘progress’ means will be the ideology that wins the day. This is a large part of why this Substack is called ‘Anglofuturist’.
The word ‘conservative party’ is inherently unattractive, the current strong inroads with young people the Canadian Conservative Party has made not withstanding. Young people are not intrinsically left-wing, but they are intrinsically anti-conservative, and drawn towards disruptors of the status quo.
Traditional Conservatives represent ‘Legitimists’, to use French Monarchist comparisons, bitter and resentful mourners for the status quo-ante they can’t figure out why failed, doomed to lose because history never repeats itself exactly, and allowing political opponents to define what ‘progress’ means.
We should seek to be ‘Bonapartists’ instead; not seek to go backwards but to create something new, built on right-wing values of hierarchy, but also progress and modernity. Napoleon Bonaparte was in a way a ‘Right-Wing Progressive’ of his era.
Javier Milei is a distinctly un-conservative figure; he is a radical figure, who wants to violently shake up the Argentina status quo. His popularity with young people, and continuing popularity despite the economic turmoil Argentina continues to be in, show the success of this approach, proving that you do not have to be left-wing to appear fresh and radical.
Where we should NOT Compromise
A lot of what I have said in the previous section may come off as ‘appeasing the left’. I don’t think all of it is, as stuff like the rise in housing costs can be clearly linked to high levels of immigration.
However, it’s true that by abolishing tuition fees, and emphasising climate change is manmade, serious, and we need to act to reduce emissions, I could be said to be ‘giving ground’ to the left. I don’t consider either of those things necessarily left-wing, but they unquestionably are ‘left-coded’.
But ‘left-coded’ does not mean ‘left’. Adopting left-coded positions is actually very important, as it allows us to appeal to elite human capital without compromising on our core values. The difficulty is knowing which positions are simply ‘left-coded’, and which are ‘core values’.
We should NOT compromise on immigration, anti-White racism (all Woke laws which are ultimately based on this), or LGBT issues. If we are sufficiently good with our presentation and adopt positions like being environmentalist that land well with Elite Human Capital, we can get a hearing on these issues.
Immigration is the easiest to talk about here, we can talk about the threat to public services, the effect on wages, the effect on the cost of housing, and we can also show people the rate of demographic change and get people to question: ‘is it really racist to not want to be a minority in your own country?’ The immigration issue that is the prime motivator of a lot of these European right-populist parties.
Anti-White racism is a bit more difficult, and we will need to be careful about how to communicate this. We need to ‘meet people where they are’, showing that you abhor racism but these days it is mostly Whites that are affected, and emphasise that unequal group outcomes does not indicate discrimination because Asians outperform Whites (HBD is a little strong at this stage, but it’s important that we gradually mainstream this).
LGBT will be the hardest, given the hold that this cancerous ideology has on elite public opinion and on young people. But the best way is to echo TERF-talking points (single-sex spaces, sex-based rights, protect women’s sports, against child transition) talking about the tragedy of de-transitioners, and finally ‘religious freedom’ by getting Muslims communicating these messages.
For most young people, if they are shown the horror stories of the de-transitioners and rapes by biological males in female spaces, and the rest of the programme meets young people where they are, they are not so dogmatically attached to LGBT that they will put their own safety at risk. The TERF movement, whilst it has been helped by it being women delivering these messages, need more young, attractive women delivering them so they can’t be dismissed as hags. Attractive women are indispensable at being able to communicate our message, particularly on the LGBT issue which is so formidable.
There is a type of European right-populism that does move leftwards on cultural issues, Fortuynism which I have criticised extensively, but this is not what I am advocating. Parties like National Rally in France and Brothers of Italy do not gain youth support by moving leftwards on cultural issues; they show persuading young people to reject positions they have been indoctrinated to believe in is in fact possible.
What We Should Focus On to Appeal To Them
Material Wellbeing: First and foremost, this must be addressed. In order to get the youth vote, we need to focus on how and why our policies will make their life better. Laser-in on bread and butter issues like housing costs, the inability to move out from parents homes, unstable employment, lack of an education system that delivers good employment prospects and in fact sells them a con throughout their teenage years, and the uncontrolled levels of immigration pushing up the price of housing and making streets less safe. In regards to LGBT, always focus on the personal stories of women threatened by the loss of women’s spaces, and the tragedy of de-transitioners.
Personal Freedom: Young people these days have a crippling lack of freedom in their lives. Everything is ultra-regulated, as shown most dramatically by the Covid lockdowns. There is a censorious atmosphere of what you are and aren’t allowed to say or joke about, your employer can spy on your social media comments in case you engage in ‘hate speech’, ID is required everywhere in order to enjoy freedoms that your parents enjoyed (whereas kids have access to ‘drag queen story hour’ and transgender indoctrination in schools, making perverted and sick sexuality more attainable than healthy sexuality) We need to show we are more pro-freedom than the left, that we are the side of the rebels, of the open-minded, and of the libertines. We can’t overdo this, saying ‘conservatism is the new counterculture’ feels forced and desperate, it is something that is shown, not told. We need to be the cool party where you’re allowed to say ‘naughty words’ (these days, racial slurs) and that we won’t judge you for it. Our policies should reflect a libertarian atmosphere, you should be able to have fun and live your life to your fullest, and if that makes some other people feel uncomfortable, that’s their problem and not yours. These days, it is the Woke who are always talking about the fact they ‘feel unsafe’ and crying for everything to be regulated.
Anti-Woke Popularism: Like this City Journal Article which was praising the approach of DeSantis in 2022, we need to emphasise issues where the public already agrees with us. For young people, this would be narrower due to them being less aligned with us overall, but even amongst young people there are a significant portion of them that aren’t Woke, and there are ways of communicating issues that can find more common ground with where people are. Marine Le Pen did this very effectively as I explained in my previous article, that a large reason why she was able to increase her support from her father is because she started talking about a wider range of issues, like the effects of globalisation on working-class communities.
Ideological Vision: Finally, young people respond well to a convincing ideological vision. They do not like bland politicians who support things mostly staying the same except tinkering around the edges. They like leaders who can give a vision and a narrative of society. This is what unites people on the left like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, and also people on the right like Javier Milei and Ron Paul. Young people tend to have more time for thinking outside the box and different ways of doing things because they have a new sense of independence from their parents but without much to lose, so the forces of ‘change’ that can make themselves seem fresh and exciting.
The Young People’s Manifesto
Here is my take at drafting a platform which could get youth support, whilst remaining anti-Woke to its core.
Education:
Wipe off all student loan debt, partially funded by closing down ‘wasteful’ (aka, Woke) university departments.
Have only the top 10% of men and top 10% of women go to university, but make it free for those students, though they must pay a graduate tax.
Give a lump sum to all those that don’t go to university in order to go to a vocational college linked to employment (with these institutions taxed for graduate unemployment), do an online course, or start their own business.
Work to create a ‘university-like experience’ at vocational colleges, create uni-style ‘youth blocks’ in cities, built directly by local authorities or in collaboration with private companies, at an ultra-low cost, to allow young people independence from their parents. Create ‘youth unions’ providing societies, and work to improve nightlife.
Personal Freedom
Legalise all recreational drugs.
Liberalise draconian anti-smoking regulations.
Legalise all sex work.
Liberalise draconian gun laws, emphasise ‘right to self defence’.
Legalise euthanasia (also will take burden off social services).
Reduce drinking age to 16; if 16-year olds are getting the vote they deserve a drink, ‘old enough to vote, old enough for a pint’.
Create loopholes to draconian ID requirements in pubs and nightclubs, make enforcement much more relaxed.
Create constitutional provisions to ensure something akin to Covid lockdowns never happens again.
Try and form an agreement with the EU about freedom of movement, allowing easier travel.
Protect the right to use physical currency.
Housing
Repeal the 1947 Town and County Planning Act.
Deregulate the Green Belt.
Mandate that local councils build a certain number of houses per year, with a ‘target house price’ and ‘target rent price’.
Replace Council Tax and Business Rates with a Land Value Tax, assessed on the Estonian model and revalued every 10-years, with the tax sufficiently high enough to ward off speculation. There would be deductions for farmers, those with mobility issues, those who have added value to the surrounding areas (a politically feasible implementation of the Commonwealth City idea, of not punishing raising productive land value.)
Allow local communities to determine the architectural style these houses will be in.
Allow all houses built in a certain architectural style, and adhering to a standardised set of regulations, to be built without planning permission.
Explicitly say that reducing house prices is a No. 1 goal.
If the private sector cannot build enough houses, local authorities should be required to build houses themselves to meet dwelling and price targets.
Create a Singapore-style system of state-constructed housing one buys from the council, with the money reinvested back into social housing.
Allow only British citizens access to social housing, and those born in Britain having priority.
Prohibit those who aren’t British citizens from owning homes.
Taxes
Institute a vast tax simplification programme, reducing the 21,000 page tax code to less than 1000.
Merge as many taxes as possible, chiefly income tax and national insurance.
Create only one rate for VAT, and regulate by statute what is tax-free.
Make Land Value Taxes (LVT), other taxes on natural monopolies, and Pigouvian taxes institute the largest portion of government revenue possible.
Phase LVT in gradually, allowing for developers to adjust and build new high density housing without a sharp rise in rents as the tax is passed on to tenants.
Ring-fence Pigouvian taxes to only go towards the negative externalities.
Create as few taxes as possible; aim for a tax system like Hong Kong, Estonia, or Georgia (country).
Abolish inheritance tax.
Public Spending
Balance the budget.
Peg retirement age to life expectancy.
Replace state pension with retiree negative income tax.
End the ‘Triple Lock’ and only make the pension rise in line with inflation.
Require those over the age of 50 to pay into a ‘social care insurance fund’.
End Winter Fuel Payment.
Create discounts for youth travel, including reduced road tax, free public transport, and discounts on flights.
Abolish foreign aid.
Regulation
Patent and copyright reform, weaken intellectual property restrictions and expand ‘fair use’.
Ban non-British citizens from owning key infrastructure.
Expand use of Bitcoin, following the lead of El-Salvador, and consider a Bitcoin peg.
Immigration
Link high immigration to issues that young people care about, like housing costs and crime.
Deport all illegal immigrants.
Make dual citizenship harder to obtain.
Remove dual citizenship from those who have committed crimes.
End indefinite leave to remain and give legal immigrants below an income threshold a period by which they must have left the country and return home.
Emphasise the declining percentage of the White British population.
Have a memorandum on immigration for 5-years, after that ‘net-zero’.
Favour EU citizens over those outside the EU (and non-White).
Employ young people to do jobs immigrants currently do.
Focus on areas where foreign cultures are a threat to women’s rights (FGM, child marriage, honour killings, etcetera).
Wokeness
Use TERF talking points about ‘single-sex spaces’ and ‘sex-based rights’.
Emphasise the threat to free speech.
Focus on ‘anti-White racism’.
Class the pride flag as a totalitarian symbol.
Abolish all hate speech laws, and free and compensate all those convicted for hate speech like Sam Melia.
Make doxing a criminal offense under the ‘right to privacy’.
As mentioned previously, and not specific to young people, abolish 1998 Human Rights Act, 2003 Communications Act, 2005 Constitutional Reform Act, 2006 Equality Act, and 2010 Equality Act.
Repeal the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, make ‘biological sex at birth’ the only means of classifying gender.
Remove Woke indoctrination in schools and universities.
Defund Arts Councils.
Defund all Woke initiatives that Charlotte Gill has highlighted.
Create a ‘Privatisation of Marriage’ Act.
Use the full force of the law against the ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-racist’ movements.
Sue organisations like ‘Hope Not Hate’, Stonewall, and Mermaids into oblivion.
Publicise the horrors of de-transitioners, and give them ample compensation and public awareness.
Environment
Don’t be climate change deniers. Remain committed to net-zero, separating it from Wokeism.
Take a hard-line on plastic pollution, with plastic packaging phaseouts and ‘bring your own containers’ measures.
Build more incinerators and waste to electricity, create zero landfill.
Build more electric vehicle charging points, and maintain the 2030 phaseout of fossil fuel vehicles.
Support a free-market for energy, which would involve removing all fossil fuel subsidies and green energy subsidies. If renewables really are cheaper, this should cause no problem.
Consolidate the various environmental taxes into a single Pollutants Tax.
Heavily invest, similar to the focus given to the Covid vaccine, on the development of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Liberalise red-tape around nuclear, whilst maintaining high public safety.
Have a laser-focused nuclear strategy.
Build nuclear reprocessing facilities
Rebuild state capacity for infrastructure projects.
Remove red tape, NIMBYism, and ability for activists to endlessly litigate infrastructure projects.
Promote artificial meat.
Promote GMO food.
Invest in ocean clean-up projects.
Invest conservation work in restoring Britain’s ancient rainforests.
Political Reform
Support Demeny Voting (parents being able to vote on their children’s behalf), with those under the age of 16 who are of exceptional intelligence being able to take a test on political knowledge, and then exercise their right to vote themselves.
If we are going to have universal suffrage and votes at 16 (both of which I oppose intellectually), it doesn’t make sense to exclude children, young people deserve representation, even if for under 16s it is on their behalf, as for far too long older generations have voted on irreversible decisions, like Brexit, which young people will be more affected by.
Support electoral reform, ideally the Single Transferable Vote (STV).
Support Swiss-style citizens initiatives and referendums.
Civil Service Reform.
Aesthetics
The final important factor is aesthetics. Aesthetics are very important for political movements, the logo and colour scheme of a party can tell you who it’s primarily trying to appeal to.
For parties trying to attract older, more rural, and more religious voters, it will tend to use more detailed symbolism and less vivid colours. Examples of that could be the British (modern) SDP, the Swiss People’s Party, and Ireland’s Aontu.
However, to appeal to young people, aesthetics tends to be more vivid, bright, and futuristic. Yellow, magenta, and turquoise are favourite colours of these kinds of parties.
These aren’t typical populist-right colours, however in order to attract elite human capital and young people to the maximum possible extent, I feel it is better to utilise the symbolism of a lot of ‘classical liberal’ parties.
Examples would be Javier Milei’s ‘Liberty Advances’, Estonia’s Reform Party, Germany’s FDP (which did well with young people in 2021), Germany’s ‘Party of Humanists’, Andrew Yang’s Forward Party (the first incarnation when it actually had policies) in the US, Justice Party of Denmark (one of the few Georgist parties), Portugal’s ‘Liberal Initiative’, Australia’s ‘Fusion Party’, or ACT New Zealand.
An ideological label is also an aesthetic in and of itself. It is better to call yourself a ‘Classical Liberal’, ‘Left-Libertarian’, or ‘Georgist’ party, but then sneak in hardline immigration restriction and anti-Woke policies, which can serve effectively as a Trojan Horse, a bit like Erdogan’s AKP did in Türkiye. Appeal to the ‘radical centre’ and ‘centre-right’ when in actual fact your personnel is operated by a vanguard that will immediately start burrowing its way into the bureaucracy when you get into power, again similar to Erdogan.
Conclusion
A lot of these positions are at odds with mainstream conservatism in Britain, and is guaranteed to annoy at least one faction or financial backer. But I do believe they represent a compelling means by which to engage young people in our worldview.
I’m again leaving it open as to whether this is the Conservative Party reformed or an entirely new party. In some ways completely starting over from the Conservatives will be refreshing and allow us to get more creative with ideas, though the difficulty of replacing one of the two main parties in a First Past the Post system remains a serious obstacle. I still think ‘Conservative Party’ is an unappealing name for young people, though Poilievre’s popularity in Canada show it isn’t insurmountable.
Anyway, I’ve given the reasons other than indoctrination and censorship as to why Britain’s youth are Woke, and my take on how that could be changed. Which political forces decide to take me up, if any do, is out of my control.
***Very long comment, my apologies***
Very interesting article John, thank you for this.
I'm slightly older than you, being a 35 year old man, fortunate enough to own a house outright with my fiancée and so if all goes well, I won't ever have to worry about house prices. In fact, I would be more than happy for the value of my house to plummet if it meant that housing became affordable for Britain's young people who don't seem to stand a chance at the moment.
Your statement of being at university during the lockdowns would put you at your mid 20's, I'm assuming, and this youthful perspective certainly comes through in your writing.
While reading, I found myself agreeing with the bulk of what you were saying while disagreeing here and there (synthetic meat? No, thank you). I am also still very skeptical (not a flat-out denier, mind you) of man-made climate change. I do think that climate change is taking place but this is simply a natural occurrence. Ice Ages have ended in times past because the Earth warmed up and I don't think it was due to whooly mammoths driving around in petrol-powered cars, lol.
I don't know enough about it, though, to make a final decision on where I stand. But I do know that I have an instinctive distrust of that particular part of the narrative. You state that certain parties are bribing Farage and others to deny it, but there are almost certainly other parties bribing other politicians to promote it as fact. It can't just be taken as a definite fact when for every "expert" saying it's man-made, there seem to be just as many saying it isn't. But again, I'm in no position to declare with absolute certainty if I think it is or isn't humans who are the main cause.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the LGBT issue, this is a profoundly dangerous ideology and it being inflicted on our kids is absolutely unforgivable.
I like your ideas on how best to appeal to young people too. "Conservative" does sound rather stale now, as does the term "Tory". It sounds stuffy even to me, so those younger than myself will certainly not see any appeal there. Perhaps an extensive rebrand with a clearing out of the non-based and new name like the "Vision Party" would work (or something less cringe, lol). Add a modern aesthetic to the party logo with some indigo and yellow, and there you go.
My fiancée and I were actually discussing earlier how we can see a shift in the British youth who haven't bought into the woke hivemind mentality wholesale. My thoughts were that kids instinctively rebel against what they see as being old-fashioned and it's our hope that the kids start to see "wokeness" as being for out of touch older people. I think this will come to pass, but we can't rely on this alone and additional measures will have to be taken to get their attention.
Sorry this ended up rather long, but I wanted to thank you for a well-written and thoughtful article which has given me much to think about.
Looking forward to the next one!
Cheers.
IYes