Young people, enough about my generation mugging you off with Brexit – 8 June is your chance to mug me

Newly registered young voter? Welcome to the democratic process. Many thousands seem to have come onto the register in recent weeks. You’ve done the right thing, providing you turn up at the polling station on 8 June. Now’s your chance to mug me.

That’s right. Your chance to rebel against all the oldies who bothered to turn out – about 80 per cent of the over-55s made sure to cast a ballot – and vote for Brexit last year (because the dirty secret of many young protesters on the streets and social media alike is that they failed to do the same).

Your chance to secure intergenerational fairness, whatever that is. Your chance to make me pay for my care when I am too confused to vote. Your chance to raid the savings and pensions of my generation to pay for free school meals for your children.

Your chance to make me pay for your university education, even if you end up earning vastly more than I ever did. Your chance to get me to subsidise your housing, even though it was a struggle for me to buy a home. Even though my generation endured years when graduate unemployment was at very high levels. It's all there for you to reap on 8 June.

I wouldn’t dream of telling you which party would be best to opt for. This is not just because it would make this article even more annoying and patronising than it already is, but because all the parties seem to have a platform that is actually skewed against the older voters, just in different ways and to varying degrees. So you can take your pick.

I hope, though, that you don't indulge in electoral granny-bashing and reflect on how it might be when you too have worked hard and become more financially secure and your kids’ and grandkids’ generation come along and say to themselves: “I’m having a bit of that.” It¦s an abuse of democracy, ironically enough, this apparent rush of the young onto the electoral rolls but that is better than any of the alternatives to democracy. Even if it legitimises ageism and the appropriation of property, as I am about to experience.

I actually find this setting of generations against each other very ugly – this was not a persecution people of my generation, when we were young, visited on those who’d gone through two world wars and the Great Depression. Realistically, though, self-interest in voting behaviour is entirely natural and must be accepted, in the end, as the price of wider participation and a competitive, vibrant democratic system.

In that sense only am I looking forward to getting mugged, whoever wins the next election.