If the Tories keep giving young people like me the cold shoulder over Brexit, they’ll lose us for good

Unless the party acts now and introduces radical change, any attempts to recruit the youth will be hopeless

The Tories have been out scouring the country looking for youth votes for some time now. Many in the party seem concerned that their current electoral success relies too heavily on the older vote. New schemes, such as the announcement for major tax cuts for university graduates are therefore afoot to lure in younger people.

But in my opinion, any attempts to do so will be hopeless as long as this Tory-driven hard Brexit persists.

Last year Michael Gove, the Leave frontman, and Ruth Davidson, the vocal Remainer, banded together to launch a new think tank called Onward to appeal to a younger voting base, stating that without fresh ideas, the party will “be finished for at least a generation”.

In addition, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), another centre-right think tank, published a pamphlet – “New Blue: Ideas for a New Generation” – jam-packed with ideas to turn the youth Tory.

Tory membership currently stands at 124,000, and fewer than 10,000 are under the age of 30. Adding insult to injury, last year the party received more donations from the dead (in bequests) than from living members.

The same CPS survey revealed that 44 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds claimed they would never vote Tory. This sort of statistic has traditionally been met with a sense of stoicism by Tories, and a belief that young people will inevitably drift towards the Conservatives as they age and gain a greater understanding of politics. The director of CPS, Robert Colvile, puts young people’s support for Labour politics down to indoctrination by left-wing teachers.

Perhaps more worrying for the Conservatives, however, is that the survey found a larger proportion of those aged 25-49 – a huge 48 per cent – share the same anti-Tory sentiment. On paper, this is a trend that could hint at huge electoral cost over the coming decades.

What the report failed to address is the role of Brexit in all of this, which 75 per cent of voters aged 18 to 25 opposed in 2016.

In addition, the largest poll to be taken since the 2016 referendum found that 53 per cent of people now want to remain.

Another YouGov poll from last year specifically measuring the positions of young people over Brexit shows that an astounding 87 per cent of 18 and 19-year-olds who were too young to take part in the EU referendum would also vote to remain given the opportunity.

Indeed, at the same time as investigating what issues matter the most to young people, the CPS survey only managed to go as far as asking – “once Brexit has been resolved, what other issues will be most important for the government to address?”

Quite how it considered its findings to be constructive is beyond me.

Admittedly, the report did touch on young people’s desire for a better NHS, greater care for people’s mental health in schools and universities, affordable housing and greater job opportunities, yet the failure to see all of these as interconnected with the issue of Brexit is a mistake.

In short, it’s not necessarily the case that young people share no Tory values.

However, any Tory changes to policy to appeal to younger people would likely become utterly redundant in a state reeling from a botched Brexit.

A hard Brexit would fundamentally make it more difficult for young people to find a job or buy a house. Both opportunities and outcomes are laid down by it.

In the next couple of months, the Tories need to hear the concerns of young people on Brexit – not give them the cold shoulder.

Trust in traditional politics is low, and institutions are brittle. Unless the party acts now and introduces radical change, any attempts to recruit youth will be hopeless thanks to Brexit.

As it stands, the Tories risk slamming the door in the face of huge swaths of the population for good.