Britain’s youth are not just more liberal than their elders. They are also more liberal than any previous generation. One politician seems to speak their language

A GROUP of 17- and 18-year-olds assembled in their lunch hour at a diverse London school offers a cross-section of political views. Some are more left-wing than others; some are more apathetic. But they are not as different as they seem. When pushed to describe their politics, they agree that the state’s primary role is to protect individual freedom. For them, social and moral causes such as gay rights and sex equality loom larger than things like welfare and health. Asked whether any had joined recent protests against government spending cuts, they respond with raised eyebrows, laughter and effusive denials. One admits to going, “but only for a look.” The pavement-pounding youth of past decades this is not.

“Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and is not a conservative has no brains.” So Winston Churchill, among others, is supposed to have observed. Young Britons are still liberal today. But not in the way that Churchill meant, or in the common sense of the word. Nor, probably, will they grow out of their liberalism.

The young are less likely than their elders to consider themselves part of any particular religion, less likely to join a political party or a trade union and, according to the long-running British Social Attitudes survey (BSA), less likely to have a “high or very high opinion” of the armed forces. As far as they are concerned, people have a right to express themselves by what they consume and how they choose to live.

Predictably, that translates into a tolerance for social and cultural difference. Polls show that the young are more relaxed than others about drugs, sex, alcohol, euthanasia and non-traditional family structures. They dislike immigration, but not as strongly as do their elders. And they are becoming ever more liberal. The BSA has tracked attitudes for three decades. It shows that the young are now far more tolerant of homosexuality, for example, than were previous generations at the same age.

Experimenters with new technologies, fashions and ideas, young people in Britain and elsewhere have long tweaked established social institutions. But their iconoclasm goes further than this. Young Britons are classical liberals: as well as prizing social freedom, they believe in low taxes, limited welfare and personal responsibility. In America they would be called libertarians.

More than two-thirds of people born before 1939 consider the welfare state “one of Britain’s proudest achievements”. Less than one-third of those born after 1979 say the same. According to the BSA, members of Generation Y are not just half as likely as older people to consider it the state’s responsibility to cover the costs of residential care in old age. They are also more likely to take such a hard-hearted view than were members of the famously jaded Generation X (born between 1966 and 1979) at the same stage of life.

“Every successive generation is less collectivist than the last,” says Ben Page of Ipsos MORI, a pollster. All age groups are becoming more socially and economically liberal. But the young are ahead of the general trend. They have a more sceptical view of state transfers, even allowing for the general shift in attitudes (see first chart). Polling by YouGov shows that those aged 18 to 24 are also more likely than older people to consider social problems the responsibility of individuals rather than government. They are deficit hawks (see second chart). They care about the environment, but are also keen on commerce: more supportive of the privatisation of utilities, more likely to reject government attempts to ban branding on cigarette packets and more likely to agree that Tesco, Britain’s supermarket giant, “has only become so large by offering customers what they want”.

Why the shift? History is one explanation. Today’s young people grew up in a period of relatively low unemployment, after the removal of the contributory elements of the welfare system and long after the collectivist afterglow of the second world war had faded. But their attitudes also reflect the hardships they face today. The economic slowdown and government cuts have hit them harder than most. The coalition has trimmed the support paid to those who stay in school between the ages of 16 and 18, raised university tuition fees and axed a temporary employment scheme for those aged 18 to 24. Although overall joblessness is lower than in most European countries, youth unemployment has increased by half since 2008: an advertisement of eight vacancies at a Nottingham coffee shop recently drew 1,700 applications. Just as the construction of the post-war welfare state helps to explain the collectivist instincts of the old, today’s economic adversity and dwindling welfare payments appear to be forging a generation of dogged individualists. Rosina St James, a 22-year-old student who chairs the British Youth Council, a network of 230 organisations, describes a sense that “you’re running against the person next to you”. “People in our generation are incredibly competitive with each other,” she says. Young Britons’ broad liberalism, their suspicion of state interventions of most varieties, not only contrasts with the views of their elders. It also makes them unusual internationally. Britons between 15 and 35 are more relaxed about the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis than are young people in the EU as a whole. Another Eurobarometer study conducted in 2011 showed that Britons in that age group were more likely to have set up their own business than their counterparts in any other large European country.

In the United States (where, admittedly, the state is smaller) polling in 2012 by the Pew Research Center shows that 59% of Americans aged 18 to 29 thought that “government should do more to solve problems”. That was higher than for any other age group. The firm’s polls also show that members of the youngest age group, though liberal on gay marriage, are less likely to say that abortion should be legal than any group apart from the over-65s. (Abortion is not always a libertarian cause: Ron Paul, the country’s most famous libertarian, is fiercely against it.)

Young Britons’ beliefs probably owe much to the country’s education system. Britain has high levels of university attendance, a factor that correlates with social liberalism, says James Tilley, an academic specialising in public opinion. It is a materialistic society with a flexible labour market; its citizens chart their lives on social media with more zeal than most—all things that tend to contribute to a competitive, individualist mindset.

As yet, there is little sign any of this is permeating mainstream politics. The two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, broadly adhere to the conventional right-left divide (with economic liberalism on one side and social liberalism on the other). Most young people reject politics altogether: a 2013 study of political engagement by the Hansard Society found that although some two-thirds of adults under 35 declare themselves interested in “current affairs”, only one-third confessed an interest in “politics”. Research by Ipsos MORI suggests that turnout among young people at the 2010 election was just 44%, far below the national average of 65%.

Ayn’t seen nothing yet

But among the politically engaged minority, libertarianism is growing. In April your correspondent squeezed into a fuggy crowd of enthusiasts trading quotes by Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard in a room above a central London pub. Between discourses on the merits of Bitcoin (“a currency without government—perfect!”) old-timers marvelled at the surge of interest. Freedom Forum, an annual convention for young libertarians, has tripled in size since its launch in 2011; a similar venture planned for July—a “Freedom Week” of debate and lectures—has ten applicants for every place. Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think-tank, declares himself “gobsmacked” at the new popularity of anti-statist ideas and confidently predicts the emergence of a mass libertarian movement.

That is premature. Most young Britons show little interest in -isms of any sort. But Mr Littlewood is right to treat this trend among the politically active as the visible tip of an iceberg of passive libertarian sentiment among the disengaged.

A mainstream politician could yet tap into it. Speaking to young people from different backgrounds and parts of the country, from the engaged to the apathetic, your correspondent often asked if any politicians appealed to them. The reaction was strikingly uniform: silence, then contemplation, then a one-word answer—“Boris”—before a flood of agreement: “Oh yeah, I’d vote for Boris Johnson.” The chaotic, colourful mayor of London, a rare politician who transcends his Tory identity by melding social and economic liberalism, appears to have Britain’s libertarian youth in the bag. The 2020 election beckons.