Michael Clifford: Alienated youth may look to Sinn Féin
Young people have been the biggest losers in the housing crisis of the last five years..
Alienation has exercised a huge pull on politics in recent years. Look at the UK. Brexit was born out of alienation. Donald Trump’s victory likewise. In both these cases, constituencies alienated by economic and social policies reached for a brand of right-wing populism which promised to restore the days of yore when things were so much better.
A different dynamic is at work in this country. We also have an alienated constituency, but it is not looking longingly to the past, but to a future that is growing dark.
This week, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) published a report predicting that the millennial generation, those in their 20s and 30s are likely to become the first to be worse off than their parents. Historically, certainly since the industrial revolution, every generation has enjoyed a better standard of living than that it succeeded.
Should the predictions be borne out, there will be massive implications for the way we live. Making a better world for children is an elemental component of the social contract. The nature of progress has always been predicated on optimism. Everything that is being done has, in theory at least, the future in mind. Recalibrating that psyche to one in which pessimism dominates would be a massive change.
The ESRI research points to stagnant wages and higher housing costs as primary causes of the pessimism. Wages have flat-lined for young people entering the labour market.
None of this is a major surprise. Young people have been the biggest losers in the housing crisis of the last five years. The changing nature of work has also impacted greatest on that generation.
Not so long ago, a job meant secure conditions and benefits on which a foundation for a stake in society could be laid. Now, apart from those who are highly skilled, it’s all temporary contracts, casual arrangements or even bogus self-employment.
However, it is the housing crisis that is the great leveller. The vast majority of young people are renting and the cost of renting right now is beyond all reason.
According to the latest statistics from the Residential Tenancies Board, the average rent for 2020 was €1,256. The Central Statistics Office reports that the average sales price in the same period was €297,043, which translates as a mortgage of €1,138, according to average loan conditions. So owning a home is €118 a month cheaper than renting.
An increasing number of people have had no option but to return home and live with their parents. The spectre of adult families living in the same home is not uncommon in the developing world. Ireland is a wealthy country by comparison. Yet many are now reduced to this. Something is drastically out of synch when that has come to pass.
Among an older cohort, some will claim that the young have never had it so good. Teenagers are equipped with the kind of luxuries and accessories that would have been alien to anybody who grew up before the 1990s. The phone is a must have. Designer clothes are de rigueur across society. They are accustomed to eating food that is cooked outside the home. Once they are earning they consider foreign holidays to be a right of passage.
All of which is factually accurate but far from the truth. In reality, today’s youth are living in a different country. Ireland grew up in the 1990s, as a confluence of events ensured that it became wealthy in a relatively short time. Anybody who came of age prior to that had a completely different experience. Nobody, for instance, had designer gear and nobody felt worse off for it. The innate confidence displayed by today’s youth was nowhere to be seen. Expectations were lower because that is how people were conditioned in such a country.
There wasn’t great jobs available, but there was always the boat, or, for the luckier ones, the plane to the USA or even Australia. Emigrating was accepted as a way of life. And there was certainly precious few who were compelled to return home to their parents. Even those who were on the dole could manage to find somewhere to live. Often it wasn’t much in the way of comfort, but that didn’t matter.
It is entirely reasonable that today’s young people have higher expectations because they are conditioned to believe that in their formative years. They are, nominally at least, growing up in a wealthy country so, of course, they have those expectations. Then the reality comes knocking. That notion you had that you can enjoy that which your parents took for granted as a basic standard of living? Sorry, all bets are off.
What remains to be seen is whether the younger cohort react by engaging with politics. Traditionally, in a political system dominated by vested interests, the young vote has never been taken seriously. During the last election the big issue was the raising of the pension age, which affects an older generation.
Ultimately the young will be paying for that, but the bill is on the never, never. The imbalance of power between property owners and renters is a reflection of the power of the former in the political culture. The opposition among many parties to a property tax in the midst of a housing and renting crisis tells all you need to know about where power resides across the home-owning divide.
So there is plenty for alienated youth to get stuck into should they be of a mind to do so. Traditionally, they don’t vote unless it’s a referendum on a social issue. Traditionally, when things got dark, the young just left the country with a vague prospect of returning. That option isn’t anywhere near as available today and it’s not clear as to whether today’s youth would want to go as willingly.
Alienated constituencies in the UK and USA turned to a right-wing brand of populism in attempting to retrieve their lost security. That option, thankfully, isn’t on the table here for alienated youth. In any event, the nastier aspects to that brand of populism would not find widespread appeal in this country.
The only real alternative to the politics that has prevailed over the lowering of expectations and prospects is the left-wing brand of populism espoused by the main opposition party, Sinn Féin.
One fault with populism is that it rarely delivers in the long term. That is already apparent in the UK and USA. Whether Sinn Féin’s brand would be any different remains to be seen. But you can fully understand why any youth vote would be inclined to take a chance on it.
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