Millennials

Thursday

Lottie Dexter

Ed Miliband is losing Generation Right

Rigorous welfare reforms for the under-25s must be combined with targeted tax breaks. That’s the best way to get young Britain going and galvanise the new electorate. For keen observers, Ed Miliband’s speech on welfare may sound familiar. Last November Labour dropped plans — to scrap benefits for the under-25s — like a hot potato after vicious attacks from activists. Yet a few months on and Miliband rehashes these, pledging to continue good work this government is already doing, for instance young people already receive a lower rate of Jobseeker’s Allowance and can already take up training and continue receiving their benefits. It seems that Ed Miliband is the timid

Wednesday

James Delingpole

Spectator Debate: Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Welcome to Generation Y’s world

The Spectator’s latest debate – Stop Whining Young People: You’ve Never Had It So Good – was most disgracefully skewed in favour of the proposition. Not only did the epically relaxed moderator Toby Young flagrantly and self-confessedly side with the proposers but so too did the event sponsor, Alan Warner of Duncan Lawrie private banking. Warner recalled, in his introductory speech, how very difficult it had been as a young man coming to terms with the fact that he would never be able to afford to live, like his parents’ generation, in Chelsea. Instead, he had to venture to the exotic reaches of the Angel, Islington and had to endure

Monday

Declan Harvey

Generation Y have a natural taste for conservative values

I’ve been working with a team of radio producers, Vicky Spratt and Lewis Goodall, on a documentary for BBC Radio 4 called Generation Right. We’re looking at the political views of our generation — Generation Y – to see whether today’s twentysomethings are a new breed of right-wingers. Compared to their predecessors, ‘Gen Y’ have shifted to the right on economic issues, while they have slid to the left socially (with more progressive views on homosexuality, women’s rights and immigration). In our programme we set out to explore why. An analysis of research by pollsters IPSOS Mori suggests that unlike generations before us, Gen Y have a much more individualised

Sebastian Payne

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is wrong — my generation isn’t selfish or obsessed with cappuccinos

Is Generation Y becoming more right wing and self-obsessed? Radio 4 broadcast a very interesting documentary tonight, Generation Right, on whether my generation is becoming more individualistic — featuring this parish’s Toby Young and Fraser Nelson. Both argued that some of our values might be perceived as right-wing but the trend isn’t that simple. Thanks to greater choice and empowerment of the individual, Generation Y is far less trusting of the state, which one could translate as a form of small-c conservatism. The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is someone who believes that. She told Radio 4 my generation is selfish and spoilt: ‘…they’re a frightfully spoilt generation. They hate the fact they don’t

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the gilded generation, one year countdown to the election and rise of the bores

Is it fair to describe today’s youth as the ‘gilded generation’? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Delingpole discusses this week’s Spectator cover feature with The Economist’s Daniel Knowles. With rising house prices, increasing levels of debts and a highly competitive jobs market, is the notion that the young have never had it so good a myth? Were things better for young people in the 1970s? And will today’s young generation witness a fall in living standards, compared to their elders? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also look forward to the general election, which is exactly one year today. At this stage, who is looking most likely to ‘win’, whether it is another coalition or being the

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Women under 40 have won their battle. It’s the young men we now need to worry about

I am taken to task by the Guardian’s Ally Fogg for my Telegraph column on the growing underachievement of boys. It’s a thoughtful and spunky piece, which I thought worth replying to here. The phenomenon of male underperformance causes much angst on the left, demanding a choice between feminism and equality. For anyone born after Perry Como was in the charts, women are no longer underperforming. When law and medicine graduates are 60pc female, and girls a third more likely to apply to university than boys, we’re not looking at equality. We’re looking at a new inequality being incubated, because male horizons are narrowing. The notions of feminism and equality are