Here’s a nightmare for those of us who want a more just and equal society. The right, in Britain and the rest of Europe, finds a strategy for eternal political dominance: in an ageing society, it simply nurtures the support of the older generation, securing the votes of an expanding, highly politically engaged demographic. The young, it abandons. Far less likely to vote, they can be condemned to a future of job and housing insecurity, debt and falling living standards, with few political consequences.

That is not a dystopian future. This is the political present being constructed, at least in Britain. In every general election since 1997, the number of older people voting Conservative has increased; since 2001 more have plumped for the Tories than for Labour. Young voters decisively backed Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in 1983. By contrast, when Labour last secured a crushing victory among voters under 25, 57% still didn’t turn out to vote.

The Guardian’s study of the plight of millennials paints a bleak picture across much of the western world: of younger Europeans’ and Americans’ living standards struggling to keep up with those of older citizens. In Britain, young people face a battery of attacks on their wellbeing: a lack of affordable housing and secure, well-paid jobs, the decimation of youth services, soaring university debt, a discriminatory minimum wage, cuts to social security, and so on. So much pain, so little political engagement. How can it be reversed?

First, a war of the generations is not a solution. I occasionally see millennials on social media cursing the alleged selfishness of their grandparents’ generation. This may be cathartic for some, but it is political poison. Generations are not homogeneous, for a start, and cross-generational alliances have to be built. In an ageing society, if the left does not win a substantial proportion of the older vote, it will never rule again. If young are decisively pitted against old – in a society already riven with divide-and-rule conflict, from private- and public-sector workers to the low-paid and unemployed – then it will be the left that loses.

Low turnout among young people is not inevitable. Over 73% of 18- to 25-year-olds voted in 1983 ; it was a derisory 43% last year. Different explanations will be offered for this trend; here are mine.

Ever since the late 1970s, the dominant philosophy has been one of rugged, unabashed individualism. The obstacles we face in life are no longer collective injustices that need collective solutions; we as individuals need to deal with them ourselves, or so the mantra goes. We are supposed to get on life through our own individual effort; if we succeed, that is testament to our own abilities, if we “fail”, that is our fault. The role of government is minimised.

Second, what the state can do seems rather limited. The government has gleefully surrendered much of its own power to the market. As it is, politics seems abstract to a lot of young people, divorced from their everyday lives and experiences. Apathy: that’s the word often bandied around to describe their attitude, as though they simply don’t care. But young people do care: they have aspirations and hopes, insecurities and fears. They just don’t make a link between formal politics and these dreams and worries; it often doesn’t seem relevant.

Organising in the community, on issues relevant to younger voters’ lives, is critical

And then there’s the low esteem in which politicians themselves are held. A study a few years ago found that 81% of 18-year-olds had a negative view of political parties and politicians, while 66% of them felt government wasn’t honest or trustworthy. It is unlikely to have improved since. The bad behaviour of politicians – such as the expenses scandal – doesn’t encourage a righteous anger to clean politics up. Instead it encourages people to write off all politicians, and politics as a vehicle for meaningful change.

And so here is the tragedy: many young people understand that they face a difficult future, but are utterly resigned to it. If there is hope, many are left to believe, it is up to them alone, as individuals. That isn’t the case with all young people, of course. Bernie Sanders may not win the Democratic presidential nomination, but his political phenomenon has been driven by the determination of alienated younger voters. Over half of the young people who voted in Britain last year opted for either Labour or the Green party. And then there’s Spain, where the relatively new progressive Podemos party disproportionately takes its support from younger voters.

Note, though, that it’s not only the left gaining from the frustrations of the young. Over a third of French voters under 34 opted for the far-right Front National in local elections last year. Similarly, many Danish, Dutch and Polish young voters are opting for hard-right parties too.

If the left is to succeed, it has to do two things, neither of them easy: inspire more young people to believe in collective action as a means to change their own lives; and reverse the shift to the right among the growing grey vote. Spain shows how mobilising younger people is possible. Podemos owes its success to a range of community-based movements, beginning with the indignados in 2011, when disproportionately younger voters filled central city squares.

Organising in the community on issues relevant to younger voters’ lives, such as housing or youth services, is critical. That doesn’t simply mean protests and rallies, which tend to attract the already politically engaged. It means going to where young people are. Why aren’t trade unions and labour parties setting up youth community centres, for example?

It means having a sense of fun too: at Podemos rallies the song blaring as their leaders march on stage isn’t The Red Flag or The Internationale, but the Ghostbusters theme. Why not mix comedy, music and sports with community organising? It certainly means abandoning rhetoric and jargon that are familiar to leftwing activists but which utterly alienate most younger people.

Younger people should expect a better lot in life than their parents. The tragedy is not simply that much of the next generation are robbed of this optimism: it is that they are resigned to being so. But what is the left other than a rejection of the idea that injustice is inevitable, and a belief that it can be overcome with collective determination? Unless the left succeeds, the next generation will be written off – and it is society as a whole that will suffer.