How Labour lost the young, and how it can get them back
George Marshall • UK • 3 minute read
Image: Weldon Kennedy / Flickr
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If you find yourself, on any particular day, wanting to delve into Labour history, then I strongly encourage you to listen to Neil Kinnock’s 1985 Labour Party Conference speech. Often regarded as his greatest speech, which changed the Labour Party amid the division it caused in the room, in it Kinnock also centrally recognised that Labour must be a party for young people as much as it is for others. "We live at a time of new needs among the peoples of the world and new aspirations among young people", his Welsh tones orated towards the sea of people in front of him.
Yet now, looking back on the Starmer years, it cannot help but be noticed that Labour’s youth support was, and still is, severely damaged. In several polls, the Green Party are leading amongst 18–24-year-olds, and hve been largely since Zack Polanski was elected leader a year ago in September 2025.
Looking beyond the spreadsheet, this defection of young people en masse to the left also played out before our very eyes. At the University of Warwick, the former Warwick Labour Society made the decision in August 2025 to rebrand to the Warwick Left Society. In a statement, their Chair pointed out that the Labour Party has become "a party so out of touch with its values". At universities, we also saw support waning for those that hadn’t defected to parties like the Greens, with support for Labour policies under Starmer heavily criticised. Oxford University Labour Club vocally criticised the Home Secretary’s immigration deal with France in April 2026.
Image: Keir Starmer / Flickr
Ardent Starmer supporters will say that Mr Polanski is to blame, and in some sense there may be elements of truth in this; Polanski did come into the fray offering everything young people wanted to hear, and even deserved to hear, at a time when young people had consistently been degraded and pushed down by decades of political choices. But can we look at the last Labour government and say they did everything to support young people and their needs in the current climate? It is tough to say that they did.
After years of disregard by consecutive Conservative governments, young people expected a new deal from Starmer when he came to power in July 2024. Yet for all the respectable things the Starmer government did for people up and down the United Kingdom – such as the Renter’s Rights Act, the eventual slashing of the two-child benefit cap, and more – young people crucially still did not see Labour as remaining true to its values. In other words, any positive change made under Starmer was overshadowed, in the minds of many of Labour’s young voter base, by core weaknesses such as not having a hard enough condemnation of Israel, the introduction of the harsh Plan 5 Student Loans scheme, as well as comments towards immigrants which mimicked the rhetoric of the far right, to name a few.
So, can we blame young people for walking away from Labour when a number of the decisions being made by Starmer were becoming unrecognisable from the Labour they had joined? In a time where we face the real and brutal threat of Reform and other right-wing populist parties, and another potentially successful party on the left, then probably not. In fact, many would go as far as to say that Labour’s decline in its young voter base was deserved and now serves as a warning to Labour that young people will not automatically stay. It's a warning as to what happens when the traditional party of the left attempts to follow the right.
But now the Starmer years are over, pushed out by his party, which saw him as a threat to Labour’s future electoral success.
For Burnham, the first step must be acknowledging the scale of the problem, something he has already started to do. In his first address as Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street, Burnham said something which people who had departed from Labour were desperate to hear: "We have not been good enough, and we need to be better." To win back young people, Burnham must first win back trust and recognise the electoral power young people hold. In doing so, it can try to rediscover the moral narrative Labour once held: a party that was principled, imaginative, and future-focused. It is this that forms the success for other parties amongst young people; The Greens lead above Labour because they offer an ideal of hope targeted towards young people, making their issues feel heard. Labour must do the same.
The next decade of British politics will undoubtedly be shaped by generational issues
Above all, to win back young people, Labour must show humility. As it looks back on the Starmer years and attempts to pull apart what exactly went wrong and when, it cannot pretend that its loss of young voters was a temporary blip caused by external factors. Burnham and future Labour leaders must recognise that it was largely Labour choices that left many young people alienated. In doing so, it must learn the vital lesson that in our current political landscape young people are no longer guaranteed Labour voters. It is then, and only then, that Labour will recognise that they must fight for the vote of young people.
But doing this through rhetoric will only be the first step; the rest must come from offering policies that speak directly to the lived realities of young people. Labour must restore itself as the party for young people as Kinnock did 41 years ago, and show itself to be ambitious and not afraid to fight battles for the sake of Britain’s future.
As Britain faces a plethora of issues relevant to young people: climate change, student loans, the triple lock, house prices, and much more, the next decade of British politics will undoubtedly be shaped by generational issues. Andy Burnham has already indicated he wants young people to be at the forefront of Labour’s policies, with new approaches to education and easing financial pressures on young people, largely through cheaper transport. Now, the whole of Labour must decide that they want to be the leading party of change for young people.
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•Published: 08/09/26
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