As a student, I am used to seeing politicians consistently place the burden of some of their worst excesses of recklessness for public welfare onto my generation. Instead of investing in our future we have a government hell-bent on doing the exact opposite. From students graduating with an average debt of more than £50,000, to discriminatory minimum wage age boundaries costing some young people more than £4,000 per year. Perhaps worst of all, as Co-chair of the Young Greens, I’m horrified to see successive governments remain negligent on the very issue that will hit our generation hardest of all: climate change.
But, in recent times, nothing has been quite such a brazen assault as this government’s Brexit plan. New research has shown that young people can expect to be £108,000 worse off by 2050 in Brexit Britain and, while this is shocking, it is certainly not surprising. Young people have always known that Brexit will never be the panacea promised by the unholy trinity of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Nigel Farage. That’s why, in 2016, we voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union, and this support has only grown since.
Since then, Britain’s young people have been let down by both the big parties. They thought they could put their trust in Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party to mount the opposition to the disastrous Brexit the Tories have in store, but they have been left bitterly disappointed. Despite knowing that the vast majority of his party membership and supporters would like to see real action on Brexit, Corbyn seems more interested in his triangulation for Downing Street than he is in truly representing the voters.
Despite Corbyn’s absence the movement to stop Brexit is growing. Earlier this month, my fellow Co-chair Hannah Graham - alongside many other Green Party members - marched with over 700,000 people through the streets of London, demanding that we inject democracy into the Brexit deal process. This was the second largest march in the UK this century, and we deserve to be heard. The cost of Brexit is too high for young people to bear and a People’s Vote with remain on the ballot paper, is the only way to safeguard our future.
But of course, preventing Brexit won’t be enough on its own. The Green Party know that we cannot pretend that the vote to leave the European Union did not happen - and nor do we think we should. The reasons people voted Leave are the very reasons Greens have been arguing for radical change for decades.
The People’s Vote campaign cannot be a Brexit ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card, or a time machine back to 2015 before the referendum. Instead, it has to be a radical campaign - one that acknowledges the need for the total dismantling and restructuring of our broken economic and political system. One that provides solutions to the social and environmental crises that young people will bear the brunt of- solutions that many Leave voters were falsely led to believe Brexit would bring. The People’s Vote campaign has to show how the European Union has a necessary role to play in solving these problems, and that means moving beyond the vapid centrism of the politics of old.
For these reasons, young people must be front and centre of the campaign. Because we have been consistent in our steadfast opposition to leaving the European Union, and because we are bold and challenging in our ideas, young people’s voices are being stifled in this debate. But we are a generation that is already set to be worse off than our parents and we know that we are faced with yet another assault on our futures that we simply cannot afford. We must resist this, and we will be heard. The People’s Vote could be the democratic process for our resistance, and while we must all be ready to win, we must also be ready to make this campaign one of radical change worth winning.
Ben Parker is the a 22-year-old student, and the Co-Chair of the Young Greens of England and Wales