Rishi Sunak may be a millennial, but the average age on the green benches is 51 Still, there are some younger MPs making waves in Parliament, and attempting to bring their generation's priorities to frontline politics ✒️ youngvulgarian
It doesn’t help that they were viewed with some suspicion by the older guard when they came in. According to Kearns, “there was definitely a bit of a backlash in the party about all these [2019 intake] young people who came in and who were seen as wanting to disrupt things, and do things their own way.”
“In 2017, there were very, very few politicians that were really engaged in these topics. It’s got better since but at that time, there weren’t very many of us.” This was a common refrain across interviews: if your generation is getting shafted and you are the token politician in your social groups, you will hear about it. It doesn’t matter that it’s something you’d been trying to bang about for a long time: as Haigh found out, there is nothing quite like circumstances changing to make people suddenly care.
Alicia Kearns finished her studies at the same time, and the dearth of opportunities is what eventually led her to Parliament. “I left university at the height of the recession and I applied for three jobs every single day from the summer before I graduated. The only two job offers were one in Hull on 30k a year and one in London on £50 a week”, she explained. “My boyfriend was in London so I took the £50 job.
It was a frustrating experience, but being a relatively young woman in politics has, she says, made her aware of issues she probably would have missed otherwise. One example was the campaign she ran to stop women from giving birth and attending pregnancy appointments without their partner during the pandemic.
As for what’s next – well, for the Labour lot at least, that’s where the fun begins. Asked about future plans, all three MPs leapt at the chance to say that they would love to serve as a minister or secretary of state.
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