Last summer, I walked into the rugby club of my hometown in the Cotswolds – not to watch a game or enjoy a pint, but to vote in the General Election. After hesitating briefly in a slightly incongruous but very British polling station, I scratched a firm X with my pencil in the box next to the Labour candidate.
After 14 years of Tory rule – more than half my life – I felt hopeful for change. Like so many my age, I felt deeply disillusioned by a long period of political chaos, with multiple prime ministers in just a few years, harsh Covid lockdowns, soaring rents, shrinking job prospects and an NHS on its knees.
Sir Keir Starmer attracted a pretty comprehensive 40 per cent of votes from 18 to 24-year-olds, lured by his promises to return Britain to economic stability, restore viable public services – and most importantly because, as he vowed again and again: ‘We will not be raising taxes on working people.’
Well, what a difference 18 months make. After this week’s extraordinary Budget, which added a further £30billion of tax raises to last year’s £40billion – all to fund an increasingly gargantuan welfare state – I feel utterly betrayed.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the vital importance benefits can play in acting as a safety net and a final resort for those desperately in need.
I don’t come from a rich family – and I’ve had my share of support over the years. I was lucky enough to receive a full bursary (awarded on academic merit) to a private school that my parents would not have been able to afford otherwise.
‘The next election is a few years off – and I’ll be poorer when it comes. But already I suspect I know who I’ll be voting for – and it sure as hell won’t be Labour,’ writes Charlotte, 24
This helped me pursue my undergraduate degree at Durham, followed by a masters at Bristol.
Yet there was also a short period in my adolescence during which a change in circumstances – the sort that could happen to anyone – meant that my family became reliant on benefits.
When my mother, Samantha, who had stopped working to raise her three children in a two-parent household, suddenly became single and was left to look after us on her own, she was forced to claim what was then called Jobseeker’s Allowance for six months.
My mum worked tirelessly to find a job. She soon went back into education to study for a management degree, juggling that with any work she could get as well as childcare. Today, 15 years on, she leads a team of surveyors and proudly owns her home.
Benefits were a temporary fix for her – she wouldn’t have had it any other way. They were categorically not a lifestyle choice.
Yet that’s clearly how Labour prefers to see them. After all, when people are reliant on the taxpayer, they’re more likely to vote for the party that redistributes wealth the most aggressively.
I don’t need any lectures from Rachel Reeves or Starmer on the importance of the welfare state.
But I strongly object to economic policies that encourage people to choose to live off benefits – that is, other people’s work – instead of buckling down and making something of their own lives.
After this week’s Budget, welfare spending is predicted to rise to a scarcely believable £400 billion per year. This could see another 25,000 families claiming handouts after Reeves scrapped the two-child benefit cap. Families with six children could receive an extra £14,000 annually, incentivising people to have more kids so as to increase their ‘income’.
If that isn’t evidence that this Budget rewards benefits claimants at the cost of ‘working people’ like me, then what is?
In truth, I’ve been having serious doubts about my decision to vote Labour since last year’s Budget, when Reeves launched her first assault on strivers, breaching her party’s manifesto by increasing workplace National Insurance contributions: a clear tax on jobs.
The result? Under Starmer, inflation has spiked to 3.8 per cent, unemployment has risen from 4.1 to 5 per cent and 13 per cent of people aged 16-to-24 now fall into the ‘Neet’ category – not in employment, education or training.
Labour, if I’m honest, has been a catastrophe – far more incompetent than the Tories at their very worst – and I have a terrible case of buyer’s remorse.
Like the vast majority of people my age, I want to earn my own way. But I feel bitterly let down by the party that promised to support working people like me.
To take just a few measures: Reeves has launched a raid on workplace pensions – only in the private sector, of course – while freezing the extortionately high interest rates on student loans. (Mine currently stands at a staggering £76,000.) At 24, I fully expect to be paying this graduate tax for the rest of my working life – when people in Reeves’ and Starmer’s day went to university for free.
This Budget also means that an additional 780,000 British people will pay income tax by 2030, while 920,000 will be dragged into a higher tax bracket by the same year.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, Reeves’ freezing of tax thresholds to fund her benefits bonanza will see me lose at least £1,000, to say nothing of her other measures.
At the same time, many benefits including disability and personal independence payments will rise by 3.8 per cent next April, while the state pension will rise by 4.8 per cent.
And while I’m a million miles from being hit by Reeves’ mansion tax, which will see those who own properties worth more than £2million face an annual bill of up to £7,500, it does make me think twice about scraping the money together with my fiancé to put down a deposit on a flat in London, the city where I was born.
The Government has shown a willingness to snatch money from homeowners and now even the amount I can save tax-free in my Isa has been slashed.
‘In truth, I’ve been having serious doubts about my decision to vote Labour since last year’s Budget, when Reeves launched her first assault on strivers, breaching her party’s manifesto by increasing workplace National Insurance contributions: a clear tax on jobs’
Labour’s support is already plummeting among young people. Many don’t know where to turn: the ultra-radical Green Party is booming in the polls, even though it’s led by a self-proclaimed ‘eco-populist’ who infamously claimed in 2013 that he could make women’s breasts bigger with the power of his mind.
Other members of Gen Z are drawn to Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, but I disagree with a lot of what he says and, in particular, I think he’s wrong to lay all of Britain’s problems at the feet of mass immigration, serious though that is.
Just as well, then, that Kemi Badenoch eviscerated Reeves so brilliantly in this week’s Commons clash. The Tory leader spoke clearly and loudly to working people like me – who believe in the basic principle that we should all be able to choose our own destinies and to keep as much of our own money as possible.
When Badenoch confronted Reeves ‘woman to woman’, telling the Chancellor to stop whingeing about ‘mansplaining’ and ‘sexism’ and instead acknowledge her own incompetence and broken promises, I wanted to cheer.
The next election is a few years off – and I’ll be poorer when it comes. But already I suspect I know who I’ll be voting for – and it sure as hell won’t be Labour.
