Britain cannot afford a lost generation – focusing on young people will give Labour a political edge

Poverty is now an issue for working families and the young – generational and geographical divides are widening

To create a better Britain after the pandemic, we must focus on the next generation (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Inequality is once again a core battleground in politics. Unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, who was more adept at ruthlessly exploiting discontent among low-income Americans instead of doing anything to address it, President Biden seems determined to place both racial and social equity at the top of his administration’s agenda.

Joe Biden has been quick to make a $15 (£11) minimum wage one totemic means of doing so. But globally the left is facing a contest for the equity ground. In the UK, while the Covid-19 pandemic may have put the prime minister, Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda on hold, he is determined to return to it as a centrepiece of his brand of interventionist Conservatism.

If the Tory success in “red wall” seats is anything to go by, the tune he is playing strikes a chord with many of those from disadvantaged areas. Inequality is changing the electoral landscape and for good reason. It has long been the case that Britain, even while it has become wealthier, has struggled to become fairer.  

Over the last 40 years only 10 per cent of national economic growth went to the bottom half of the income distribution. Two-fifths went to the top 10 per cent. Meanwhile 5 million workers – mainly women – earn less than the Real Living Wage.

Poverty, once the preserve of the workless, is now concentrated in working families. For too many people their wages are not enough to keep them afloat – and with one-quarter of adults lacking any form of savings, the pandemic has tipped millions from living a precariously independent existence into impoverished dependence.

The virus has exposed and exacerbated inequality in the UK. People from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are far more likely to die from Covid-19 than those who are white. Those living in deprived areas have experienced mortality rates from coronavirus that are more than double those living in more wealthy areas.

Covid-19 has not only exposed the fragility of our care system, it has exposed the fragility of our society. During the pandemic between March and April, 1.5 million extra people applied for Universal Credit and, according to the Trussell Trust, 1.9 million parcels were given to people during the same period. The north-south divide has re-entered the national conversation. Today the country feels more divided than ever.  

Research by Pricewaterhouse Coopers suggests that only 30 per cent of people agree that British society is fair, with people in London twice as likely to believe that than those in the southwest, northwest and the east of England. So, the prime minister’s levelling up agenda seems to be on point and his party has a powerful political incentive to deliver progress. If they are to remain Tory, red wall seats like Bassetlaw, Blyth Valley and Bolsover won from Labour at the last election will expect to see visible improvements by the next one. Little surprise then that No 10’s plan for when the pandemic eases is that levelling up will become a core focus for the government. But it faces a three-fold problem.

First, there is a deep conflict within the Conservative Party about whether it is more of a home counties party or a red wall one. The one favours cashing in on Brexit by creating a Singaporean-style model of a small state and low taxes. The other favours a Heseltine vision of the UK, built on interventionism and investment. As ever, Johnson will no doubt try to have his cake and eat it – but the nearer the next election comes, the more the internal Tory clamour will grow for fiscal probity to be made a core dividing line with Labour. That would scupper Johnson’s ambitions to spend his way to a more level Britain.  

Second, the PM’s instinct is to address place-based inequality primarily through new capital investment – new roads, railways, green projects and the like. He is an infrastructure addict with a penchant for garden bridges across the Thames and other iconic projects. Disadvantaged areas need some of that, but they also need education and labour market interventions if local economies and communities are to be strengthened.

Without better schools, skills, jobs and careers, the levelling up agenda will run into the sand. But active labour market policies, in particular, are inimical to a party that likes to extol the virtues of the free market. So Johnson is left relying on infrastructure to deliver results. Capital projects, however, take time and that does not really fit the electoral necessity of having visible progress by 2024.  

Third, important though levelling up between places is, it is not the only equity issue that must be addressed if the discontent of “left behind Britain” is to be addressed. Health inequality is but one symptom of a country fractured by income, class, race and gender. Inequality hurts people not just places. The Conservatives have successfully defined inequality to be about the latter not the former. They are far more comfortable talking about the one than they are the other.

This is where the opportunity for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party lies. Of course, Labour sees equity as its issue in much the way Conservatives do freedom. But there is little doubt that Johnson has succeeded in making place-based equity his, so leaving Labour either tamely applauding from the sidelines or complaining that the government should be going further. To genuinely trump Johnson, Starmer needs to redefine equity as more than a place-based agenda.    

There are elephant traps for Starmer here. His efforts to differentiate himself from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn would be derailed by anything that looked like a return to a leftist “politics of envy” agenda. But there is one aspect of inequality that has the virtue both of being far removed from Corbyn territory and deeply relevant for the future of our country: the plight of the Covid generation and the prospects of greater inter-generational fairness. Corbyn explicitly abandoned social mobility as a cause for his Labour Party. Starmer should make the issue his.  

There are good reasons for doing so. If older people have been on the health frontline of the pandemic, it is the young who seem doomed to suffer the biggest economic and social consequences. More than half of under-25s had been furloughed or lost their jobs by last June. One million of them are already unemployed and need help, but the government’s Kickstart scheme will assist barely one in eight of them. It’s little surprise that there has been a 50 per cent leap in the number of 18 to 29 year-olds reporting higher-than-normal levels of mental health problems since the pandemic began. Britain cannot afford a lost generation if we are to have any chance of levelling up our country.  

Some warn that stepping into this terrain risks putting Labour on the wrong side of a generational war between the old who tend to vote and the young who do not. But the truth is that the old worry about the young. Grandparents and parents alike are concerned that the social progress they enjoyed will not be repeated for this and future generations of young people.

When the chances of a young adult on a middle income owning a home have more than halved in just two decades and the prospects of getting a place on the housing ladder feel increasingly remote, their worries are well-founded. These concerns about thwarted aspirations straddle middle income and lower-income families.  As both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair realised, it is aligning behind the politics of aspiration that creates the electoral coalitions that help parties win elections. It is a lesson Starmer would do well to heed.  

There is one further reason he should do so too. There will come a point, hopefully in the near future, when the central question in politics today (how to manage the pandemic?) starts to give way to a different one: how to create a better Britain to emerge from it? The political action today is all about the present. The question before too long will be about who has the best agenda for the future.

Focusing on the next generation would give Labour that most precious of advantages. With the government up to its eyes in pandemic crisis management, Starmer should spend these next few weeks and months working out how to make that happen. It will be time well spent and will determine his and Labour’s chances for years to come.

Alan Milburn is a former Labour Cabinet minister