The Fractured Future Of Britain

A broken social contract and perceived intergenerational inequality are driving Britain's youth to abandon the political mainstream in favour of radical ideologies.

The social contract was a hallmark of the post-war era, stemming from a belief that the government should repay the previous sacrifices of its people by ensuring that they would be cared for by the state, at least to a basic degree. This guaranteed that the most vulnerable in society had access to a safety net, provided non-begrudgingly, as the war had reinforced a sense of shared suffering and sacrifice that made communal support more palatable. It was against this backdrop that the global economic expansion began, ushering in a prolonged period of rapid economic growth. This naturally fueled a more optimistic vision of the future, where each generation would enjoy a better and more prosperous life than the last, as had clearly been the case for the first post-war generation.

However, this foundational belief in continuous generational improvement is quickly unravelling, and for the nation’s latest youth cohort, the fundamental economic conditions that shape so much of one’s life now differ vastly from those of their predecessors. This has led to an ideological chasm opening between the generations, marked by a feeling of thwarted opportunity, declining societal ambition, and a deep-seated economic malaise. For this sub-section of society, there is a growing realisation that the foundations of a decent life are now unattainable, driving a renewed focus on survival over aspiration. A desire to attain a basic level of financial stability, through fair wages and accessible housing, rather than an ambition to achieve society-advancing feats that may have driven other generations.

These areas of decline initially fueled political detachment among the young, who believed that elected representatives within the current system did not care about their specific needs, and thus, active participation in the system was pointless. However, as the imbalance between generations begins to seep into every facet of modern life, this disillusionment is giving way to far more dangerous ideologies, based on a desire to overhaul the failing system. A majority of young people now believe that British democracy is in trouble, propelling a growing number away from established parties and towards the political fringes. For a generation that feels abandoned and whose social contract has been rescinded, this is the logical endpoint. The more that the system appears to no longer offer a stake in the future, the more likely it is that those left behind will search for alternatives, no matter how radical, to reclaim their societal ownership.

In Britain, the divide can be seen most clearly within the housing market, where a sharp rise in valuations over the previous forty years has overwhelmingly benefited a small subset of the current population. During these years, homeownership became a driving tenet in the lives of many, stemming from a belief that has since been confirmed, that one’s home could be the key to future wealth and prosperity. The system encouraged this mindset, with government policies designed to maintain the housing boom and politicians campaigning on the societal pride of Britain’s high homeownership rates and frothy property prices. Yet this dream of homeownership, once a unifying ambition and a tangible marker of progress, has devolved into a near-impossible fantasy for millions of young people.

Between 1997 and 2017, average house prices in England rose by 173% in real terms, while real incomes of younger adults grew by only 19%. Consequently, just 35% of 25 to 34-year-olds own a home as today’s homebuyers face the toughest level of affordability on record, funnelling many into an equally expensive rental market, or forced into a prolonged period of living with parents. This has delayed many of the lifestyle milestones that were a staple of the previous generation, acting as a permanent divide between a propertied older class and a dispossessed youth. They view this as representative of a structural failure in a system no longer aligned with their needs. The housing market is no longer considered a ladder of social mobility, but a fortress of unearned wealth, reinforcing the system’s profound and deeply felt injustice.

Yet the drivers of disenfranchisement among Britain's youth are multifaceted, with the intergenerational inequity appearing just as prevalent within the modern labour market, whose deep-rooted faults have failed to provide a pathway to financial security. Against a backdrop of impossible housing costs, solace for the young has not come from the world of work, where wage suppression and widespread job instability have only further compounded the problem. Britain has experienced 15 years of stagnation, with this lost wage growth costing the average worker an estimated £10,700 a year in potential earnings, exacerbated by an economy undergoing a sustained collapse in productivity. This landscape has left many feeling that the system is rigged against them from the outset, denying young people the means to accumulate necessary capital and forcing them into a state of perpetual financial hardship.

However, it is important to appreciate that the growing ideological divide between the generations is not solely being driven by factors impacting the young, but also the absence of those same factors impacting the old. This is particularly the case for the so-called Baby Boomer cohort born between the mid-1940s and 1960s, who are far less likely to experience the same economic and social factors currently afflicting the young. Of course, this isn’t to say that they do not experience any hardship or negative pressures, but simply that they are insulated from many of those specific factors. This differing existence from that of their children and grandchildren has fostered a worldview increasingly detached from the country's emergent social crises, widening the disconnect.

This economic insulation is compounded by an informational one, stemming from a clear generational divide in media consumption, and the subsequent creation of differing echo chambers. Older age groups primarily rely on traditional media, in the form of television news, whereas the young have migrated almost entirely to online sources, via social media platforms. This vastly different method of delivery has created two parallel information ecosystems. In one, the world is seen through the curated and heavily edited lens of established broadcast and print media, tending to reflect a mainstream consensus and balanced commentary. Whereas, those same topics, when delivered through an algorithmically driven social media timeline, can take on a far more raw and emotive quality, representing fringe extreme views, devoid of editorial pruning.

This can create a form of synthetic exposure to core issues, with those in the older generation deriving an understanding of the current housing crisis or immigration debate through a BBC news report or a newspaper editorial, carefully weighted with pros and cons. Contrastingly, a younger person’s understanding will be informed by hundreds, if not thousands, of digitally curated first-hand perspectives from whatever side of the argument the algorithm deems will resonate most. That same newspaper editorial on a housing shortage could instead manifest itself as a constant stream of social media content showing squalid rental flats, greedy landlords, violent immigration rhetoric, and anti-government commentary.

In isolation, this informational disconnect may have been problematic, but when layered on top of the vastly differing economic realities faced by the generations, this transforms into a total ideological chasm. An older member of society, secure in their mortgage-free home, supported by a significant pension, and informed by the careful commentary of a nightly news broadcast, may struggle intensely with understanding the visceral sense of crisis and betrayal that preoccupies the young. From their perspective, a desire for the radical overhaul of society's core foundations would appear senseless, and even ungrateful, as why on earth would someone wish to deconstruct a system that has been so beneficial? The young, however, whose daily life is characterised by economic hardship and social contract erosion, only become further entrenched in their desire for system-wide destruction when faced with the calm of their elders, who are perceived as infuriatingly denying many aspects of their lived experience. Intergenerational dialogue is, therefore, unable to effectively cover issues of system reform and policy change, as there is an innate disagreement over the occurrence of the problems that would warrant these changes. They can’t discuss how best to change government policy in order to improve housing if one party does not believe that there is any reason to actually change the housing market altogether.

This lack of shared perspective and subsequent ideological divide is particularly problematic for the current immigration debate, whereby the economic insulation of the old and the acute exposure of the young collide. On the surface, this division is obscured by national polling, which allows views on immigration policy to be conveniently split along party-political grounds. Yet a deeper analysis reveals that attitudes are actually being formed by fundamentally differing levels of exposure to the issue, as many in the Baby Boomer generation are largely insulated from the most immediate pressures associated with high levels of net migration. They are retired from the labour market, their housing is secure, and they often live in less metropolitan areas, not immediately affected by the population increase. As a consequence, their experience of immigration is a far more palatable, almost hypothetical version, filtered through the lens of the traditional media, whose coverage is focused on broader cultural debates or national identity questions.

Yet for many younger people, the very real consequences of increased immigration are inescapable, with the downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on rents and public services playing a role in their daily struggles, not abstract concepts to discuss in a broadsheet column. This disconnect can easily transform a policy disagreement into a deeply personal sense of injustice, acting as a powerful catalyst for political radicalisation. When a struggling young person sees the older generation voting for policies whose negative consequences they are completely insulated from, or showing indifference towards issues that the young are forced to bear the full cost of, it can be perceived as the ultimate act of generational betrayal.

The cumulative effect of economic exclusion, social disenfranchisement, and a profound sense of abandonment is pushing Britain’s youth towards a great rejection of the existing system’s status quo. Growing numbers are turning to the ideological fringes in search of retribution against a broken system, not driven by a desire to shape future policy, but to totally overhaul the existing structure. This is why the current wave of radicalisation is not occurring as a monolithic movement, but is instead totally bifurcated, with parallel trends forming across the far-left and the far-right in equal measure. Though their stated ambitions may appear to differ, these are not contradictory forces but two sides of the same coin, representing a wholesale rejection of an antagonistic system that needs to be overcome, not engaged with.

In those already somewhat left of centre, a deep-seated hostility towards capitalism is taking root, driven by an interpretation from their lived experiences that the free market can only deliver insecurity and inequality. As a consequence, two-thirds of young people have stated that they would prefer to live in a socialist economic system, with the vast majority believing that the current capitalist system is to blame for many of the nation's crises, given that it inherently fuels selfishness and greed. This no longer represents a mild move towards the left as a form of temporary youthful rebellion, but instead indicates an entrenched rejection of the current system and a desire to replace it with a radical socialist regime, in search of fairness and justice.

For many, the first real exposure to this growing anti-capitalist sentiment can be found in response to the climate, with large numbers of young people expressing overwhelming anxiety about the environment’s decline. These movements attribute climate change to the capitalist system, and are forthright in their accusation of generational betrayal by the government and the wider system’s inaction. Consequently, these movements are not satisfied with climate-related policy adjustments, as previous environmental campaigns may have been, but instead are increasingly militant and radical in their need for total system overhaul. This approach is quickly spreading beyond the realm of climate change, becoming an all-encompassing far-left ideology that aims to dismantle the current system for its multitude of unrepented sins.

This same drift is occurring in parallel on the far right, driven by similar underlying economic and social grievances, but viewed through the prism of cultural threats and a decline in status of traditional values. They believe that the system is broken and must be dismantled, but in this case, the enemy is not capitalism; rather, the cultural and political establishment that has allowed the current system to devolve. This has initially manifested itself in a growing abandonment of traditional right-leaning mainstream political parties, due to their perceived role in creating the failing system that now needs replacing. There has also been a total rejection of mainstream media and other government-adjacent organisations, which are viewed as being pillars of the existing establishment. In the same way that the ideological capture of the far-left movement was seen most clearly in response to the issue of climate change, immigration remains the entry point issue for many young people moving towards the far-right. Their anxieties towards the cultural and economic threat posed by years of uncontrolled immigration mirror those of the young far left who view the climate crisis as equally calamitous. They are both fuelled by shared underlying experiences and a desire to radically overhaul the existing system, but originate from differing interpretations of the same economic and social malignancies.

In response to this fragmentation, the foundations of the existing two-party system are beginning to crumble, as the highly divided younger generation begins to form a larger proportion of Britain's electorate. This movement away from the established political parties can be seen in the most recent election, as the vote share has collapsed to just 57% in 2024, from over 80% as recently as 2017. However, this is just the beginning of a genuine multi-party outcome at the ballot box that will represent a fundamental, and likely irreversible, shift in voting behaviour, which the First-Past-the-Post framework is incapable of managing. This current approach is designed to exaggerate the lead of the largest party in order to manufacture a majority; however, when the vote share is far more fragmented, the system will produce outcomes increasingly diverging from the true views of the electorate. The first signs of this were clear following the 2024 election, where nearly three-quarters of all votes cast had no impact on the underlying result, magnifying the disconnect amongst voters. Thus, the addition of new parties able to splinter the vote further will increase the potential for misalignment, with estimates that Reform UK could currently lead a general election from only a quarter of the vote share. This would result in a scenario where no plausible two-party coalition could form a majority, strengthening the argument of democratic illegitimacy, and driving many away from the established political system, thereby creating a cycle of ever more distorted and unstable outcomes at each future election.

Despite this initial transition towards the more extreme political fringes, the destructive elements of the existing system that catalysed this move show no signs of abating. The combination of an unsustainable pension system and the proliferation of extortionate self-funded social care has meant that the existing economic divide will only worsen, becoming a permanent feature of modern life. For younger Britons, there is an expectation that they must accept higher rates of taxation to fund a bulging pension deficit, despite the likelihood of receiving far less when it is their turn to retire. In the current system, pensioner payouts are entirely financed by a pay-as-you-go approach where every worker’s National Insurance contributions are continually spent on the preceding generation. Despite this forming an unwritten intergenerational pledge that tomorrow’s workers will do the same for the current workforce, this is becoming increasingly improbable, marking another instance of the broken social contract.

Worse still, the promise that the accumulated wealth of one generation, primarily held in property, would cascade down to the next could have been a highly effective method of rebalancing these inequities. This significant wealth transfer would go some way towards combating the economic strain currently facing the young by effectively providing retroactive exposure to some of the financial benefits reaped by the older generations. Yet, any hope of this vital economic rebalancing is being systematically undermined as the cost of long-term care continues to be financially ruinous. Support from the state is minimal, with the vast majority required to self-fund the full cost of their care, quickly depleting any savings and often forcing property to be sold to fund ever-increasing care expenses. This has meant that the single largest asset held by the Baby Boomer generation will increasingly be used to pay for the last years of their own life, rather than to provide assistance to their children. Many feel a great deal of uncertainty about these future care costs, becoming a primary factor in preventing them from passing on wealth to their struggling children and grandchildren when it is most needed. This lack of ultimate economic rebalancing, due to another foundational flaw within the existing framework, represents a final abandonment of the younger generation, cementing a deep and lasting resentment towards the system.

In the years ahead, the social contract erosion will continue thanks to a political and economic architecture that remains overwhelmingly geared towards supporting an entrenched past generation, at the detriment of a growing younger cohort. This will likely mark the end of stable, two-party dominance as deeply embedded generational differences replace class as the nation’s main political fault line. Throughout this period of transition, the political landscape will fracture further into smaller, distinct groups with competing priorities, each putting their members’ interests at the forefront. They will embrace a total rejection of the existing system, keen to avoid the same mistakes, by firmly establishing the interests of the current domestic generation ahead of all others. This shift should not come as a surprise, nor be considered an isolated anomalous event, but simply an acceleration and manifestation of ills that have been metastasising for decades. A breaking point has been reached, and the incumbents are deemed no longer fit for purpose; for better or worse, radical change is on the horizon.