Ben Kentish 10pm - 1am
Gen Z's future is bleak - can you blame us for wanting a dictator?
28 January 2025, 13:37
My generation is facing down a housing crisis, crippling debt, and a bleak economic future. Can you blame us for wanting a strongman to fix it all?
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Generation Z has finally had enough. Yesterday, a new poll said that 52 percent of 13 to 27 year olds believe “the UK would be a better place” with a “strong leader” and no elections.
Surprised? I’m not. Whatever people say about my generation being ‘snowflakes’, reality defrosted any privilege we had years ago.
Far from living in a world of sunshine, roses and iced coffee, we face some of the biggest challenges of any generation in peacetime.
Take home ownership. For me, aged 22, it’s a distant dream not worth contemplating. By 22, my grandparents had bought a house. My parents bought one aged 23.
Instead, Gen Z are found living with their parents, in shared housing, or renting a glorified box for thousands of pounds a month.
If you get on the housing ladder - probably with help from the Bank of Mum and Dad - it doesn’t get any better. The average monthly mortgage payment on a first home is £1,739 for Gen Z. Adjusted for inflation, it was £775 for Baby Boomers.
Combine this with a dire graduate job market and a youth mental health epidemic, and you can begin to understand why it’s irritating when people my age are labelled a bunch of frivolous layabouts.
All of this is contributing to a mass sense of social exclusion, which the far right are taking advantage of. Whether it’s Andrew Tate, Elon Musk or Nigel Farage, every day there’s a new grifter spreading misinformation and grievance.
Young people are top of their target lists. Why? Because they’re most vulnerable, and they’re most angry.
These people offer recklessly simple ‘answers’ to a world that’s more complex than ever, with ‘strong’ (read authoritarian) leadership always top of the list. Meanwhile, mainstream politicians say there are no simple solutions.
Why, then, is anyone surprised when a quick fix option like a dictatorship looks so appealing?
I’m not advocating it. But I understand how we’ve ended up here.
Mainstream politicians need to step up, now. A national lovebombing of Generation Z is needed to bring the most excluded back into the fold. Address their problems, show them they have something to offer society, and maybe they can be won back.
However damaging Tate and Co are, they are relentlessly talking to Gen Z. Mainstream politicians need to do so too. If they don’t do it now, they will not get to do so later. As yesterday’s poll shows, democracy really is on the line.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.