If there is one thing that links the incoherent mishmash of policies that Sunak has announced since becoming prime minister, it is a disregard for young people and a pervasive disinterest in tomorrow. Transport infrastructure for the future? Cancelled. The labour of 18-year-olds? Free, to be “volunteered” for the state in the form of national service. The liberty as a grown adult to choose to buy and consume a cigarette, even if it might harm you? Gone.

Sunak and the Tories increasingly resemble the inverse of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, taking cash and liberty from the young to give to the elderly. Alongside the national service policy announced at the weekend, it speaks to a party that hasn’t just given up on the young ever voting Conservative — it’s as if it actively wants to punish them.

If the party wants a new generation of patriotic youth who believe in service for their country, why not set out a genuine retail offer? Forget national service; give young people an improvement in living standards and a country that fights for them. Why should they be compelled to work for free for a state that has failed their needs so comprehensively?

It should be no surprise that the youth vote has progressively abandoned the Conservative Party since 2010. The election that ushered in David Cameron as prime minister saw 29% of 18-24 year olds voting Conservative. Four prime ministers, Brexit, a pandemic, and overlapping cost-of-living and housing crises later, this has plummeted to only 7%, barely surpassed by 25-49 year-olds at 13% of the vote. Just as 20th-century markers of adulthood such as homeownership have elongated into the future, so must our definition of the youth vote.

The problem with taking from the future to finance the spending of the present is that eventually you run out of the future. Who could say that the NHS and other public services are in a good state today? Putting the votes and priorities of economically inactive pensioners first has lowered economic growth to such a degree that state spending is becoming unsustainable.

All of these policy announcements represent the Conservative Party steering into, not out of, the reasons it is facing a catastrophic defeat. Sooner or later, it will need to find a pathway to economic growth and a new generation of voters, not least because one in ten of its entire 2019 voter base has already died. Finally facing the intergenerational inequality question, let alone giving an answer, will be the first step the party needs to take should it wish to recover.

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James Sean Dickson is an analyst and journalist who Substacks at Himbonomics.

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