It's the British Elections tomorrow, and thanks to the Iraq War becoming the issue of the election, the Labour Party under Tony Blair is not assured the cake walk into a third term that was anticipated.
So it seems there's a real opportunity to feel one's vote will have an impact. As in the states election, however, it seems that the youth vote is an under tapped resource for any party. In the states, despite major effort by a variety of venues from the parties themselves to MTV, student numbers weren't any higher than the previous election. What's with that? In the UK, there's been no such out reach. Perhaps they feel it's not worth it? It doesn't seem that 20 somthings in or out of university care to "get out the vote." Why not? What's different here? Various programs featuring interviews of 20 somethings in pubs have shown them saying "there's nothing interesting for me" and "i have to go somewhere to vote? i'm not doing that" or "it's the politicians fault: they're not offering me anything." This seems to be a bit of a surprise. For youth contemplating an education, there does seem to be an issue.
The Labour party introduced top up fees for university. The Liberal Democrats have said that they would scrap them. For selfish reasons alone, wouldn't it be worth voting for a group that would kill your major debt burden?
I've heard some mature adults here say students will just get used to fees being part of their lives. Ask some North American students how they feel about getting used to student loan debt and how crippling it can be for decades following graduation. It will be interesting to see if students who protested top up fees this past year will take the opportunity to create change here.
[Update: students ARE voting] more...
Perhaps the media has been rather misrepresenting the Youth vote - at least the Student youth vote. I've had the chance to speak with first years, third years, fourth year students and researcher assistants and they've each said, but one, that they're voting, or for that matter have postal voted already. Walking down the hall today, i heard my first political argument: it wasn't about voting or not, but about who these two "youth" had decided to support. Fantastic (the grown ups have seemed far more reluctant to "talk politics:" is that a British cultural thing, this reticence?). One of them was talking about how he's been proselytizing the need to vote to his peer group.
So what's with the media portraying the Youth of the UK as apathetic and uninterested in the election? Perhaps heading to the pubs isn't the best place to ask these probing questions?
Or is there a divide between students and employed 18-21year olds? Dunno. But today i heard if not overflowing joy at the opportunity to vote, at least a commitment among student youth to do so.
Posted by mc at May 4, 2005 12:01 PM