Britain's young people are not children of Castro – their values are those of capitalism

The settled wisdom is that the 2017 General Election, long thought in the bag for my party, was upended by the “youthquake”; the rising up of an activist younger generation tired of “austerity”, angry at intergenerational unfairness and keen to remake the world anew.

The youth will be silent no more. Socialism and Jeremy Corbyn are poised, ready to claim a prize that has eluded them for decades – and, last year, that sentiment nearly cost the Conservatives an election.

Ten months on from that election, this socialist youthquake narrative appears increasingly simplistic. The British Election Study put paid to the idea that youth turnout was substantially higher than previous elections and remarked, instead, on a perception driven by anecdote rather than data. The adoration of a field in Glastonbury does not, after all, make the voice of a generation.

Yet, the most inaccurate element of the “youthquake” fallacy is not about turnout but, rather, the core thesis itself that all young people are inherently socialist; that somehow, everyone born after 1970 has suddenly succumbed to the tradition of Castro, Chavez and Corbyn.

As a new MP, and as one on the outer cusp of that millennial generation which apparently rose up last year, I see no phalanx of socialist comrades amongst my friends and peers.

Underneath, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

My generation, and the one coming of age today, are the most individualistic, determined and outspoken groups in history; confident in our abilities, interested in the world around us and eager to make progress. For us, the world is a place to be reshaped and reformed – just as it is every generation.

What is true, is that many of my peers are frustrated by the challenges and the trade-offs required during the decade since the financial crisis to avoid economic meltdown.

Yet, our underlying values could not have been more shaped by the free markets, free enterprise and free society ideals of the last thirty years. Personal choice is absolute. The right to be oneself is total. The opportunity to achieve and, vitally, to be happy, is paramount.

Fundamentally, this isn’t a values discussion; those under the age of 45 are just as ambitious and aspirational for themselves, their families and their communities as those who have come before us – perhaps, arguably, even more so. Instead, the challenge is one of connection – to link the perpetuation of those values to the political choices which guarantee them.

Most importantly, the imperative is to shine a light on the harsh realities of socialism, to remove its false cloak of compassion and good intentions, and highlight the agenda of command, control and direction which remains at its heart and which, ultimately, is always its undoing.

So, as a country, we have two options before us in the coming years: to look over the precipice at what socialism would mean and then pull back, or to try it. If we argue the case properly, calmly and logically, then we can highlight how that failed ideology fundamentally misunderstands how humans think, work and want to live their lives.

However imperfect it may be, capitalism has so much more to offer the coming generation – and we must make that argument from first principles again. For whether you are twenty-six or ninety-six one thing, eventually, is clear: socialism doesn’t work.

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