The Rest Is Politics - "Our Generation Was Lied To": Two Gen Z MPs on Fixing Politics

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

To hear the full series “The Gen Z Story”, sign up at the restispolitics.com – use your student email for a discount How do you get older colleagues to take you seriously when you become an MP at 25? Has the social contract between the state and young people been irreparably broken? And how should Andy Burnham tackle the biggest challenges facing young people today — the mental health crisis, student loan debt, a lack of jobs and opportunities, and the impossibility of getting on the housing ladder? Keir Mather and Rosie Wrighting, two Gen Z MPS, discuss all these topics and more with Vicky Spratt as part of The Gen Z Story Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Celine Charles Executive Producer: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. They face some of the highest house prices in history, more student debt than any other generation, a cost of living crisis and a climate crisis. Their mental health is in crisis. Welcome back to the Gen Z story. I'm Vicki Spratt and these are just some of the themes that we discussed. When we made our series, there was one leader who polled best amongst younger people. It was Andy Burnham and we're back. because he is now the Prime Minister. So, what's going on? Are young people really a bunch of snowflakes with no resilience who expect too much from society?

Or has the social contract broken? Are they going to be without some of the trappings of security that their parents and grandparents had? A safe and secure home? Retirement? The state pension? Well, I've just finished interviewing two Gen Z members of Andy Burnham's government. We've had Rosie Writing, who is a PPS at the Ministry of Defence and the MP for Kettering here, alongside Keir Meather. He's the MP for Selby and a junior minister at the Department

of Transport. I found talking to them really fascinating and honestly sometimes quite confronting. I think this is a landmark moment to talk about what's going on with younger people and whether Britain's new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, can fix it. Rosie and Kear, welcome to the Genzi story. Thank you so much for coming in to chat about being Gen Z or Gen Z, I keep getting told off of pronouncing it the American way, sorry, MPs. We've talked a lot about all of the things that are going on for young people, high housing costs, tuition fees, the jobs market, mental health. How bad do you think Gen Z have it really? What's your diagnosis? Gen Z have it incredibly hard. There's no longer a feeling the effort means reward.

And that is a dangerous place to be. Because if you, you're not going to be, because if you're you're not actually sure what you're meant to do. And I see this from my friends. And I also want to acknowledge the fact I'm in an abnormally privileged position for my age. But I speak to my friends. I felt it myself. You no longer know what you're meant to do

to build yourself a good, happy, secure life. And that is a really scary place to be as a country. I think that the way that we talk about Gen Z as well has, it's scary because you hear a lot about, oh, this is a generation that can't go off their phones or can't concentrate in all of this with little ability to acknowledge that this is a generation that has been through COVID, the cost of living crisis, a housing crisis, Brexit, all of these things. It's an incredibly resilient tech-driven generation that we're just unable to unlock

and we need to for the sake of all generations and our economy. Essentially it sounds like you're saying that the link between working hard and being able to attain financial security is broken. Yeah. Do you agree with that diagnosis here? Yeah. I mean, Gen Z have got it incredibly tough and work extremely hard. And let's not forget as well, put a lot of money into the system through their hard work

and paying their taxes. And then are actually quite unfairly chastised by other parts of society for a not working hard enough or not being financially responsible enough. But really they sit at the centre of like three problems which are swirling around them at the same time. One is like quite systemic policy failures, which it is like within the art of the possible to fix, whether that be around like childcare, access to affordable housing. The second thing is that the structure of British society and that social contract is fundamentally frayed in that people are working more for less and less. They will have to work later and later into their lives. So there's that entire question about, you know, we were told that things are going to get better.

Like when is that meant to happen? Because it's certainly not happened yet, whether that be about starting a family or getting your first home. There's also something else which I think sits as a layer on top of it, which is this kind of like, I don't know how to put it like meta anxiety about the state of the world, which is like incredibly significant. I mean, if you think about the cultural moment, so I was born in 98, think about the cultural moment where we were growing up. It was very much like, you know, things are going to get better. Prosperity is, you know, spreading across the world. Democracy is in its ascendancy. We are able to deal with society's biggest problems. That edifice has been slowly picked away and we now exist in a world where the climate crisis. is starting to unfold. We're unleashing forces through the technological revolution that none of us now had to properly grapple with yet. So you're not only facing a personal predicament of my economic circumstances and not allowing me to get on

and feel a sense of like desert for how much work I do and how much I put into the system. But also you're thinking, what is the future of the world going to be like for the next generation who come after me or like what sort of world am I going to live in in 30 years' time? It's a hell of an inheritance to deal with. So yeah, I think Gen Z have got every right to feel frustrated.

I think it's quite surprising that they're not. more angry, really, about the state of the world. It's quite, yeah, it's quite a surprise in a sense. It's interesting you pick up on anger and, Rosie, you've also mentioned anger. I was at reform conference on Friday and I was interviewing lots of their younger members who were really, really organised, wanted to talk policy. I'm always struck when I interview people my age or younger by how, considered they are, often how downtroddened they sound. Why do you think people aren't angrier because I often interview older people who are very, very angry about all sorts of things in our country, particularly young people's behaviour or immigration or the economy. What's going on

with younger people? Why aren't they mobilising? I honestly think this term intergenerational unfairness has only been like an acceptable thing to acknowledge and say maybe for the last year, and maybe it's still not. I don't know. But we have related sort of generational life chances and opportunities with technology for so long. I remember my nan saying things to me like, oh, I didn't have a washing machine when I was growing up. You're so lucky you have a washing machine. And therefore, because this is a generation that have phones in their hands and are so technologically driven, I think it's not been an acceptable thing to say until really at this moment, hang on, this is really unfair. What's happening to us is really unfair. Not only is it really unfair,

but we should have said it was unfair 10 years ago and now there's this like real, real, real urgency. I think it's been a scary thing to say. I mean, I have found it's been a scary thing to like acknowledge and to get people on board with and not spoken about enough. I have the same as you. Like when I go into schools,

the way that young people in our country conduct themselves, the way they talk about policy, even if they don't agree with me, is pretty incredible and considered. And there's this term like student politics, which people kind of relate to extremism. I think I wasn't involved in student politics. I don't know.

That is not my experience when I talk to young people, students about what they want the world to see. I think that right now it is not just a nice thing to involve Gen Z, Gen Alpha in politics. I actually think it's fundamental and critical, because unless we involve this generation who've been through things that are so unique, to have experiences that are so hard, I think sometimes to the older generations to understand, we will not make this better for them.

We need to listen to them for the sake of our country and like I said, all generations. Do you think young people would get more attention if they were angry here? Well, I think that what we're seeing in our politics at the moment is this like this surge, which is, well, I guess now starting to ebb a bit of like certain people. populist parties getting a lot of support and actually a lot of support from young people. I think that's a response to the fact that people understand that there needs to be urgent solutions to the scale of the crises that we face in British society. I think that's an expression of young people's frustration with politics, not being able to

deliver in the way that they want it to. It's something that me and Rosie obviously work every day to try and counter and fix and change and improve for the better. I think ultimately one of the biggest myths and misconceptions about Gen Z is that they're sort of economically self-centered, socially disinterested, and don't feel a broader sense of obligation to their community. I cannot begin to tell you how I think the opposite is true. And I actually think young people, despite the fact that they are patiently waiting and hoping for their turn to be able to experience what it's like to have wage growth or rising living

standards, and that's obviously something that we're working to achieve, they care passionately, a about society as a whole, but actually especially about older people, I think that is such a big undercurrent in British society about young people wanting to make sure that we don't have elderly people who are living in poverty, that elderly people get access to the health care that they need, that they are part of community spaces where they feel valued and they feel dignified. I think young people are in this country a conscientious and they feel a sense of social obligation and they feel part of a society that goes beyond a narrow conception of what their generation is. The inverse of that is this intergenerational adversarialness getting overblown, I think,

by maybe aspect to the media. I think young people actually care about older people too. And I think that's part of why they're willing to carry on contributing to the system, even though they might not be getting everything that they would want in return. Rosie and Keir, you're both Gen Z Labour MPs. The Tories actually don't have a Gen Z member of parliament, which is why we've got you guys here today. Do you have anything to say about the fact that you're representing a younger generation,

but you're a member of a particular party? Yeah, I think it would only benefit our debates by having young, members on the opposition benches as well. I think it's important that all political parties have MPs that represent the population, which include young people, and it would add to our debate. I think it's hard because there's kind of the thing of the Conservatives went through a big loss, so they didn't have a new intake as large as ours, and the new intake is how you often get younger MPs in. Yeah, and Rosie, you talk a lot, don't you, about the fact that these issues that are specific to young people. Like we've all got an obligation to kind of raise the

level of urgency around how badly they need fixed. And you combine that with the fact that the prime ministers put this new emphasis on working in a cross-party way. I think that actually probably gives us license to reach across the party divide to those younger MPs. I'm 28. There are five MPs younger than me, I think, in this parliament. It's our obligation to build those bonds because, you know, I visit schools and colleges all the time. Votes at 16 is coming down the track. We've got to make sure that irrespective of young people's political views, as young legislators are able to represent them effectively. You can actually only do that if you start to have those conversations now.

So I think it's actually quite an exciting moment to be building those bonds, really. I'm interested to know, because the Liberal Democrats have got a Gen ZMP, so of the SMP. Do you guys ever get together? I've not. I don't know if you have, Rosie. So Josh, who is a Lib Demp, I was on a select committee with him for a year, so I do know him. And I have spoken to Lara quite a lot. It's quite an unusual experience to be young in Parliament. I think there is a sense of wanting to kind of look out for each other.

So yeah, I actually do speak to him. And actually, I think on the Labour side, the group of young Labour MPs, we have really nice relationship with each other as well. It does make you think as well, like, looking back, like, God, the number of issues that we need to raise up the risk register as young people, like, is as long as my arm. But if you think back to when there was just like a smattering of young MPs, like, do you remember when Mari Black was first elected?

I think she was like 20 or something. That or Dehenna Davidson when the Tory MP. It must have been a really lonely place actually at that time. And it's still comparatively quite challenging with the number that we've got now. So it just makes you think how far we've come. But actually we do have a lot further to go. Rosie, what made you get into politics? Yeah, I get asked that question quite a lot.

And there was no kind of one defining moment that I decided, I'm going to move from a career in a fashion industry to trying to run for parliament. It was kind of a emulgulation of things. I worked in an industry that you had to be very driven and it was very competitive. And I loved it and I was really sure this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I felt some of the points that you've spoken about, like that feeling of, oh, I've done all the right things. And it's not just my stories, those of my peers, older people around me who are Gen Z. We've done all the right things and our future isn't looking great.

and no one's really talking about it yet, or they're not talking about it with the amount of urgency. I'd like them to. And from a Labour family, my mum's a youth worker. She raised me by herself. So I've been a member of the party for a long time. But I felt like, no, I feel like there needs to be some younger people in politics now. And the opportunity came up to represent my home.

So there was no one moment. It was lots of little kind of frustrations coming together and feeling like I wanted to be a part of changing the country. How old are you when you became a candidate? I became a candidate at 25 and I became an MP at 26. It's quite strange. Looking back, I was not aware that was really young. I knew it was young.

I wasn't aware how unusual it was, to be honest with you, until probably the day of the general election. I'd always worked around a lot of young people and people in their 20s. And until the day of the general election and sort of a real and Kea probably had this even more than me, a real kind of increase in media wanting to talk about my age and how unusual it is. And, oh, these are the new Gen Z MPs. I had no idea that was going to be such a big thing until I was elected. Really interesting.

You were what they called the baby of the house when you were elected. How old were you when you became a candidate? I was 25. And when I was elected in 2023. So that was obviously before the general election that brought in this new wave of young MPs. I got the dubious honour of being called the baby of the house for an entire year. Like part of it is just like the weirdness of Parliament and you kind of have to take it on the chin and get on with it. I think that there's also kind of an obligation and a pressure on you to be speaking up for young people and speaking about the issues that affects them.

But I think Rosie's also right to say that when you're under that spotlight of being a young person in politics, the way that our media works is a lot of that ability to shape the debate at first kind of got taken away from me. I remember there's like, I can't remember what talk show it was, but one of the morning ones. There was an entire section about essentially whether I was old enough to be a member of parliament. I was 25 years old. Like it's hardly, you know, a limiting factor being that age. But this entire public discourse kind of whipped up around my candidacy. We're now in a situation where there are five MPs in parliament who are younger than me.

I think the youngest is 22, right? But when I came in, it was at the end of that parliament. So the average age was a lot older. So, yeah, quite an interesting place to get your feet under the table. And what was the most? that you decided to become a politician? Well, I got the politics bug really young, and I always thought it would be incredible to be a politician,

but I certainly didn't expect to be doing it when I was 25 years old. I grew up in Holland, both my parents were careers advisors, and I think they gave me a real, like, public service ethos. But I think, you know, I was born in 98 and grew up under those first new Labour governments, and I think I had a sort of a tangential sense of the optimism associated with them, and the idea that a city like mine in the north of England,

which hadn't had a fair look in since the kind of collapse of the fishing industry could have a government that was actually trying to improve the life chances of people and communities like mine. I think that kind of inspired me to want to go on and do something for the next generation of young people coming up and kind of try and instill that sense of optimism and hopefulness and also to kind of make the argument that goes a lot to experience because a lot of the debate was around or does this person have enough life experience to do this job effectively? Well, actually, I had experienced a ton of things being a young person in 2020.

in a way that a lot of my colleagues in Parliament hadn't, and I had that to bring as well. So I think I was trying to be defiant in that sense as well. Yeah, really interesting. On this point about not being taken seriously, throughout the series, this is something that Trip listeners wrote to us about saying, you know, I've got more experience of having debt at a young age, of struggling to buy a house, of working in a difficult job. And yet I still feel like I'm battling to being taken seriously. Alex wanted to know whether you have issues with constituents thinking you're too young.

Does that ever come up? on the doors and in person, not so much. On social media, yes, it does. And this conversation about experience, it's always been quite strange to me because on social media and actually in Westminster, that sentence that you just said, oh, you don't have enough, how can you have enough life experience to be here? It's quite a juxtaposition because then you go into the chamber and they're talking about things where often you are the only person in the room who has experienced that, whether that's social media, whether we should ban social media, housing, student loans, like you are the person to add that experience, but then you go on your phone

and a bunch of people have told you you're not experienced enough to be there. So there's a real juxtaposition, but constituents-wise, I don't find that so much. I think a lot of, when I was knocking doors in the general election, if people did mention my age and they weren't young themselves, quite often what they said is my granddaughter or my son have had a really difficult time and I would like someone to represent what they're going through right now and be their voice in Parliament. So I think there is more cross-generational understanding of the difficulties that Gen Z are facing than people realise or give credit for. What about you, Kirst? Yeah, I think you can always have a few sort of eye roll moments where, you know, you're open the door

and somebody goes, oh my God, you look like you're young enough to be my grandson or something. And that's like, that's obviously fine. I think the fact that I'm sat here at all is probably testament to the fact that we kind of over-egged some of these intergenerational adversarial dynamics in our politics. I mean, my seat is older than the national average. But when I was first elected, they sent somebody who was 25 to go and represent them in parliament. I do actually think that sense of intergenerational kind of care goes both ways. I speak to lots of older people who are really concerned about there not being enough opportunities in our local, area for the next generation or worries about their economic future. Likewise, I speak to loads of

young people who are worried about elderly people being in poverty or being isolated and alone. So I do think that those bonds are incredibly strong. And I actually think that older people, especially in my seat's slightly older than the national average, I quite like enthused and excited by the idea of having somebody with a bit of like fresh determination and energy to go after things. And I think if you think about a lot of the big challenges that are facing our society, whether that be like economic precariousness, the housing market not working in a way that actually suits people's lives, people being unable to get on, they kind of affect old and young people alike. And I think the moment that we're in now, I think people want big solutions to

the scale of the challenges that we face. And that's irrespective of what your age is. So once you've got over the initial eye roll that some people have towards having a young MP, I actually think if you can win the argument on its merits and convince them that you're determined to do a good job on your behalf, then actually you can get a hell of a lot done. One thing that has come up, from our listeners who've submitted questions for you is what it's like in the workplace. So we had a teacher who wrote in and she was talking about trying to navigate the workplace with older colleagues. You both have positions in government. So, Rosie, you're a PPS at the Ministry of Defence.

Keir, you're a parliamentary Undersecretary of State, which is a junior ministerial role. So you're working with civil servants, I imagine, from all walks of life and all generations. How do you navigate that? Yeah, it's a really interesting question because I, like I said, my previous job role on my team when I worked at ASOS, like the average age was in mid-20s. So I went from a career where, I'll be honest, outside of politics in my professional life, I didn't speak to anyone really outside of my generation to then walking into a career where most people were outside of my generation.

And that has been a shift. But I do think whatever area of government you're in or department, you're in, having cross-generational conversations in meetings is only something that's going to benefit the outcome and having that representation of the younger generation in the room. So most people I think have seen it as a positive, but it has been a shift. A shift for me being in the room, but I also think a shift for other people in the room to see a young woman walk in. It's quite unusual for you both, really, because you're in the position of power, in the government that's making decisions and it's the civil services job to carry out those decisions.

We had a message from Dan who said that they find working in a field with older people who seem to want to see if younger colleagues will sink or swim quite intimidating. Would you have any advice for him? It's hard. I mean, we were actually talking about this earlier. There is immense pressure because I have always felt like if I make a mistake, it's the first thing people will say is she was obviously too young to do this job or if I show any signs of weakness people will bring up my age and it has made me feel as though I've had to work incredibly hard to prove to my electorate and the people of capturing that I should be here actually when I'm here to continue to prove almost every single day that I'm here because my constituents put me here I'm here on merit and I'm here. and my age does not equal experience or what I plan to do and talk about in my privileged position as an MP.

So I don't think that's a necessarily good answer because really what you have to do is work incredibly hard. And I don't think that's right. I do think that there is an opinion or how people think about Gen Z before a young person steps in the room as, you know, someone who is not going to be able to cope with their sort of pressure, someone who is going to be on their phone a lot, does not equate to the reality that people come across when they meet someone working from the younger generation. And what I hope, I'm not going to like,

things have been tough in Parliament as a young woman, but what I hope is almost every person I meet, maybe the next younger person that they meet in politics, they will have changed their mind of what an MP should look like and what they can achieve. What about you care? Yeah, I mean, I think Rosie's absolutely right to say that it sometimes feels like the bar is higher and the risk of failure can be greater as a young person in politics because if you slip up, you validate all those assumptions that people have about you.

I think that can also mean in a weird way that the upside is a lot higher once you break through that assumption that they might have. And I think also realizing that sometimes working with older people in Parliament, they will jump to assumptions about you or conduct themselves in a way which is like not ideal, but once you've broken through, they actually have a deeper respect for you than they otherwise would. I mean, I remember when I was first elected, I was on the Treasury Select Committee when Jeremy Hunt was Chancellor. And I remember I asked him some question,

and he came back and he like pre-faced his answer by saying, and can I just say that is exactly the right way to ask a question like that? And like, he got called out by somebody else who was on the committee for being patronising. And I was kind of like, well, I don't think he was trying to be patronising. I think he was actually just like, sorry, a younger colleague getting stuck into a job and wanted to like essentially say like you did well doing that. I mean like so people say things the wrong way. People sometimes make assumptions about you. I think you kind of take that in your stride and once you break through it, if you can actually prove to them that you are

serious about what you're doing, you're dedicated to your profession and you're actually interested in working really collaboratively with them. You smash through that assumption and then the upside is a lot higher and you can actually generate a lot of good grace and ability to get things done by by proving them wrong in that sense. And I think one. of the incredible upsides is that we have a platform, a platform that, you know, we, there's 400 Labor MP, 600, it can be hard to get your voice heard. But when you're one of few very young MPs, that platform is, is pretty incredible. So for every time, kind of someone says to me, I walk into a room, they say, oh, what MP do you work for? When is the MP coming? I will take it

if it means that I can advocate for a generation in Parliament. Does that happen quite a bit? almost every day, I would say. Yeah, I also think it's wrong to say that, you know, my experience in Parliament has just purely been defined by my age, actually. I do think that more often than not, colleagues, with a few kind of like outliers where people have maybe said things that have, like, made my eyebrows go up, have treated me with, like, dignity and with respect. And, like, I think we expect that in both directions.

And I kind of wonder whether sometimes that kind of feeling is overblown almost of young people being kind of, I don't know, singled out exactly for who they are. The anecdote you just told us about with Jeremy Hunt here makes me quite reassured to hear that there's still that cross-party collaboration because everything that we see these days on TV is just each party criticising the other and everybody slacking everybody off more and more. Do you feel that it's easy to represent constituents that might not agree with you? Yeah, I do actually, yeah. And I think that there's something that relates specifically to my seat in Selby because, you know, it's slightly older than the national average. It's pretty middle income. It's a pretty reflective cross section of a British society really in my seat. And I think that, you know, I was elected after a Tory MP had been there for 14 years. And I think that when Labor won the election in 2024, I won in a by-election the year before that. And I think there was a sense of like an appetite for change. And I think choosing a young person to represent them was part of that. But

also something, people wanted more optimism and hope in their politics. They weren't happy with this kind of like this feeling of fatalism and this like cycle of decline that things couldn't be better. But obviously what we've learned in subsequent years is that there is no one agreed way of making those things better. And I think being a young person actually allows you to be more of an honest broker, I think, because people don't project onto you a group of like preconceived notions about how you should act and how you should behave necessarily. So yeah, I think it has allowed me to go out and like represent quite a diverse range of people, precisely because I've pushed against what, like, an archetypal image of an MP should be like.

So maybe that counts for something. And because I don't look typical for an MP in terms of age, maybe that makes more people feel like I'm the sort of person who could hopefully represent their views. Yeah, I feel like I've learned quite a lot from having conversations with constituents who maybe don't agree with everything that I've said or don't necessarily have labour values in the way that I do and would be minded to vote for another party, whether that's to the left or to the right. And actually when I've had conversations on the doorstep

or in my surgeries, I've learned a lot from them, and I hope that they feel like they've learned a lot for me. And I think one of the biggest things is actually when you get down to what drives people when they go to the ballot box or what sort of change they want for the country, in catching, most people want the same thing.

Like, they want to feel like, They can work hard and have a better life, whether that's for them, whether that's for their grandchildren or they want to have public services they can rely on. The conversations are, I think, quite remarkably similar, no matter who or what kind of political party you're having a conversation with, which is something I think that is a real drive and I think can bring people together. This series was about the broken social contract and how, in empirical terms, younger generations are up against it. I'm a bit older. I'm sort of what they call

geriatric millennial I think in demographic terms. I'm 38, nearly 39. So graduated just after the financial crisis and watched house prices rising. I have a very clear memory of being in my early 20s looking in estate agents constantly and like seeing prices go up by 100,000 pounds almost within six months. It was wild and then your generation are really experiencing the fallout of that because those prices just went up and up and have stayed there. We've also got problems with university educations now, people having loads of debt and maybe not quite having the jobs they expected to have. We've talked a little bit earlier about mental health. What is your diagnosis of where we're at with intergenerational inequality?

Yeah, it's a brilliant question. And one that I think about, I think almost every day in Parliament, there is a social contract that was broken and I even think of it from my own perspective. As a child, you have trusted adults in your life, whether it's your parents, whether it's your teachers or whoever it might be. They give you guidance on what you should do in order to build yourself a good life. I do not come from a wealthy family so I wanted to make sure that I did the things that I was told to do even at times when it was difficult. and that included going to university, getting a job, doing all of that that we've heard previously.

And then once you do all of that, there's this like slow realisation. I think for a lot of my peers, it wasn't an instant thing that they were like, oh, we've done something and it hasn't worked out. It was actually a slow realisation of like, okay, but I'm no longer a teenager and when does this get better? And every year it's almost like, but when can I have security? When will I be able to have a home that I know I won't be kicked out of? Like all of these things.

When can I now, I see it for my friends. When will I be able to afford to have a child? These are not big ass, but that slow realisation has caused deep rooted anger. I feel it. I feel as though I was lied to. I really, really do. And the way out, I think there's two things. There's a group of people, maybe like Gen Z, maybe older Gen Z,

where they did the right thing and they weren't giving a good life. And in my opinion, there needs to be some intervention there. And I think there's like debate over where that intervention comes and how it comes in the best way to help this group of adults. But I think we also need to talk about Gen Alpha and what sort of social contract we're selling to them now. I get frustrated with politics because I think that it only seems to be able to legislate for the people who are in Westminster or can vote for the people in Westminster.

And that's why the votes at 16, I think, is important because it gives power to 16, 17-year-olds, but I also really, really hope it means that the legislators who are in power in Westminster will have to make policy decisions that benefit that slightly younger electorate as well. I would like us to talk, yes, about the intervention, but also what we want Gen Alpha to do, in order to give themselves a good life. We're going to take a quick break now. Rosie, I think let's come back to your point about votes for 16s. Let's talk a little bit about NEETs

and the reality of what is going on for Genzi at the moment. The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350. 50 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister.

You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order, or Fraggo. A Fraggo that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. News from Gullab. hangar. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy. An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action thriller. We have two-tenth-friendly key-a-e. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Rosie, you just mentioned votes for 16-year-olds. I think it's fair to say that younger generations today are being hit with, frankly, a very unenviable set of economic circumstances. We've got 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds who are what's called neat, not on education, employment or training. House prices in the 19s were around three times the average income. Now it's closer to eight times, which is a huge, huge shift. And then, of course, tuition fees.

and student debt. One of the topics that Trip listeners write in about the most is student loans. We've got to talk about Plan 2 student loans. The repayment threshold freeze means that more people are paying back their student loans. The RPI interest rate, which has gone up in recent years when interest rates have been fluctuating. Essentially, this is a system where young people who've taken out student loans are repaying huge chunks of their income at the exact time in their lives where they really need to be saving for a deposit for a house or have extra money for childcare. In terms of this sort of economic inheritance that young people have, what are the solutions? Kid, do you have any ideas about what we do about any of this? Well, part of it is about

what we need to fix in the moment. Like, part of it is the legacy of not building a system that allows people to get on and be productive and build a life for them and their family. So things to do with having a proper childcare system, which means that you can kind of get on with work, having access to affordable housing, having support with your energy bills. You know, those economic issues that affect young people, affect everyone else in society. And yet we need to be reflective of the fact that because young people are just emerging into the job market and because they're dealing with the legacy of issues like COVID, those issues will be particularly acute. Then I think there's a need to focus on a lot of the things that actually the Prime

Minister has set out recently about, you know, my seat is covered with pit villages where if you were a young man, you would know exactly what you could do if you wanted skilled, well-paying work that gave you dignity and a sense of purpose and a sense of actually contributing to Britain. You would go and work on the coal field. We don't have that anymore. So that focus on re-industrialization of getting the skills base where it needs to be is critically important. But I actually think there's something that goes over the top of it all, which is young people in this country need to understand that Labor gets the urgency of the challenges that they face. They need to understand that because there are young people in the government working hard to

fix these issues, we get it and we're impatient as they are to see change. Ultimately, they need to know that if they're going to trust us to carry on delivering for them. Alan Milburn has this massive review into NEETs coming out, young people who are not in education, employment or training and it's come about because the number of needs surpassed a million for the first time since the wake of the financial crisis it's actually gone down to just below a million but still an enormous number are you worried about what he might say i think that's something that sort of people in parliament feel kind of is coming down the line and it is going to be very damning i hope that that moment brings some like kind of what keir spoke about real urgency some of

Some of the things that you kind of listed off which Gen Z are dealing with, I think partly the problem is, first of all, I know there's a temptation and it feels like we don't keep wanting to look back at what went wrong, but there does need to be, I think, probably cross-party consensus that a generation has been let down, really, really badly let down, and then how we build on from that. One thing that I have found kind of always frustrating about government, and this is not Labour or Conservative, to be honest,

that these policy areas have worked in silos. And actually, I think we need to look at this generation as a whole and be like, how can we work cross-departmental to make sure that there is urgent intervention for a generation that has been through so much. I think some of the things you listed off youth unemployment and student loans are real catalyst. But actually, there are many, many issues and factors here.

On student loans, this is one of the topic. that trip listeners write in about the most. And when we asked what they wanted us to ask you, it was you'll be unsurprised to hear top of the list. So I'm just going to come to Emmeline. So she said, I'm 30 years old, paying almost £200 a month on my student loan, and I'm not even touching the capital.

Do you agree these loans were missold? And what action should the government take to make the system fairer? Well, it's something that I know the Prime Minister has said we need to take a serious look at. and as somebody who is on a plan two student loan, I'm very grateful that we are. I think being missold is an interesting characterization of it.

I think in a sense it's not quite right because it didn't really feel like there was an option. We really had that emphasis, because I went to uni in 2016, really had the emphasis of if you want to get on, you must go to university. So it wasn't, it didn't really feel like making a choice. It felt like a compulsion, right? And then you are in this system now,

as Emily and Raises, where you're trying to pay down the amount that you have. But it feels like it's this purpose. like block on your potential to get on. So not only is there a sense of like what economic impact is that having in terms of what are people paying in the high street, whatever else, but also like what does that mean for your future aspiration? Yeah, and I'm really pleased to see Andy say that he's going to look at it. I think that what has happened with student loans is such a clear example. I think of what has happened with many different areas, including housing for our

generation and I actually like Kea like I don't remember a moment where I was told I was taking on a significant financial burden in fact quite the opposite like I said from a single parent family I didn't grow up wealthy and I was very much told there was no money waiting for me if you want to build yourself a better life these are the results you need to get in order to get into university and what you were actually sold in terms of student loans was the complete opposite, something that's potentially going to burden you for the rest of your life. And that feels deeply unfair. I think there's questions, and I understand how complicated it is now. There's questions about how best to intervene here in order to help those who need it most. And that's why I think

things like, I'm pleased to see that there was a review in the lifetime ISO and all of these different financial intensives in order to help young people at this pretty important point. But I have friends, the lucky friends, who I should say, who, you know, a grandparent has died, and they've used their inheritance to pay off some of their student loan. And what is even more remarkable, and, you know, I've spoken about this before, my loan is over 80,000 pounds. And the reason my loan is so high is because I took a large maintenance loan because I was from a lower income family. So not only you penalised because you're young, I actually think what doesn't get spoken about enough is your penalise even more because you grew up

poorer. It's also about making the right decisions for the future as well because that whole point around the like commodification and marketisation of higher education happened at the same time as that emphasis really decisively shifting toward you should be going to university if you want to get on. And I think now we're finally starting to wake up as a country and the government is in the same place of saying, actually, it's not the right thing for, like, necessarily everyone or every young person in the UK to want a university education because you can get on quicker, you can train in a profession that better suits your skill set by maybe not going to university and taking a technical or vocational route. Having more of an emphasis on that and getting rid of this, like,

quite narrow-minded view that the only way that you can attain success is by going to university for three years is, is like hopefully going to liberate the next generation of young people who have a better range of options. Kirt, earlier you spoke about issues rising up the risk register. For young people, student loans, obviously huge, housing crisis, huge. You also mentioned cost of childcare, enormous, doesn't feel like anybody's really paying enough attention to that. We have some of the most expensive childcare in the West. But what about another huge iceberg on the horizon, the triple lock? Jeremy Hunt, former chancellor, has come out, easy to come out when you're no longer chancellor and say this, but he has said it nonetheless that he thinks it is

essentially immoral to burden future generations with the triple lock. Labor have a manifesto commitment to keep it. But also, as you alluded to earlier, when my generation retires, when your generation retires, is looking like it might keep also being kicked further into the future. Where do we begin with that? I think it's one of those ones where you've got to like replace the awe with an and. I feel like too often in our politics when we discuss these really knotty issues. It's like, do you want to help the young or do you want to help the old? And actually, I think there is not going to be an equitable way through any of these questions unless we see the facts that we need to protect, you know, older people in our society as well as giving

younger people a fair chance to get on. Crucial to that is knowing that when you get older, you will have the same safety net. And I think the triple lock is part of that, actually. You know, older people deserve dignity today and we're going to deserve dignity when we get older two. Modern contemporary questions about the triple lock don't change questions regarding pension equity for people who are our age now. I mean, how much longer are we? What's the retirement age going to be by the time, you know, we're all finished in our working lives. We're going to have to work for longer. What support we're going to get in the workplace for that? Really quite fundamental things about how do you have access to proper family life and

recreation if you're going to carry on working until much later in life? You know, we've got to be very ambitious and forward-looking, but I don't think we can kind of like throw the baby out with the bathwater and take away the inheritance of people who've worked all their lives and also paid into the system. On that, so let's assume we're all working into our 70s. I was looking at a statistic the other week about how many people, assuming they can buy homes, are going to be repaying mortgages into their 70s, potentially past the current retirement age.

You know, it's already close to a million people in that situation. Rosie, do you think it is a case that this is young people versus old? Young people have it terrible. old people have it really easy or do you think there might be some common ground? No, I don't think it's young versus old at all because like take the example of needs, this is a generation that we need to succeed

in order to help the ageing population. This is not one or the other. If young people are not economically secure, living a prosperous life, our country is not in a good place. So I don't think this is one or the other. The other thing is, and I don't think this gets recognized enough, the financial decisions that older people are taking in order to support younger generations as well.

Like, I have friends who have parents who've remorgeted in order to help give their child a housing deposit or to help their child with childcare for their grandchildren. Younger people are increasingly having to go to their parents and grandparents for big financial decisions. and that is having a knock-on impact. Back to kind of your question, I think this is one of the things like social care. Personally, there needs to be a cross-party consensus and talks on because whenever someone makes a decision

or looks at making a decision and it talks about the triple locker, it talks about these things, then there's political attacks and that means that there is a generational divide in these policy decisions in Parliament even if it doesn't feel like there is outside of Parliament. And I think that we need to move away from that.

But also one other thing which I think is really, really important is we have to address pensioner poverty. Once, if we financially address pensioner poverty and help pensioners who are most in need, which is a real, real thing. And I see it in my constituency. I feel like we can better have a conversation around the bigger picture without this image in our heads. of elderly people in poverty, kind of in their homes, in really isolated, poor environments. It sounds like you're both saying we kind of need a cross-party working group on the social contract, right?

Because essentially for our welfare state to keep functioning, the NHS, the state pension, we need young people to be earning enough to pay in for all people to get out what they feel they have put in at the end of their working lives. And if young people carry on struggling, and don't have the opportunities that they thought they would have, it's going to be harder and harder for them to pay in.

We've already seen the birth rate fall. One of the things I don't think is talked about enough with that is if people aren't having children, who's going to be paying tax? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the other big themes of the Gen Z story was young people's mental health. Now, we've all heard the stereotype that young people are lazy and entitled and snowflakes and that they're overly anxious and not resilient. but Alan Milburn's interim report found that two in five, 18 to 24 year olds have had to take time out of work because of their mental health.

What do you think is going on for this generation? Do you think the stereotypes are fair or unfair? The stereotype is totally unfair. I think in another episode on this podcast, somebody was talking about how we've medicalized our language a bit and maybe there's a thing about people self-diagnosing. That could very well be true, but there is also like an incredibly large mental health crisis happening in this country. And it is because, A, modern life is incredibly hard. B, we have had a lot of public policy failures, which have made life for working people even harder. And you go back to that Neat's point about a lack of opportunity, employability, and people getting the skills they need to get on.

That's part of it. But also, you know, Andy Burnham's talked a lot about the legacy that we've inherited from the 1980s. And I think about the seat that I represent. A big part of that in communities like mine is the decline in community spaces for young people, where young people are often vilified for just existing in our town centres and like, you know, just going about their lives and hanging out with their friends, you know, if all of that starts to fall away and you don't have those shared spaces, where you can also do that like intergenerational interacting too, I think it's no wonder that people become isolated, they become anxious, they become alone. And I think, you know, suicide is one of the biggest killers of young men. And we think about why that is, I think it's because we've gotten into this pattern from the 1980s onwards, actually, where a lot of the things that were established ways in which, which you derived a sense of purpose and dignity as a young man don't exist in the same way anymore. We need to be frank about that and have a conversation about it.

I think especially parties on the left. For some reason, we kind of don't want to get into it. We think it's a bit of like a taboo space. And like we actually are doing a disservice to a lot of the people we represent unless we try and grapple with these problems head on. I was in Blackpool at the job centre the other week with the youth employment team. I met a young guy called Benny in his early 20s. He told me he'd applied for 120 jobs.

I challenge anyone to keep their chin up in that situation. And that's the same sort of person that other political people will look at and say, well, they're just not trying hard enough. They're not showing enough. Get up and go. It is like the height of disrespect. And it's just very ignorant, really, of like, people's lived experience. What do you think about the mental health crisis for young people, Rosie?

Yeah, I think that that term of like, oh, they're all snowflakes. They're not resilient enough is not only, like, deeply unfair, but there is very clear evidence. That's not true. Like, this is a generation that has been through. a pandemic during their education, some of the most biggest political turmoil, some of the most scary times and still is there wanting to work. I think that shows incredible resilience, but also work is no longer seen as a route out of poverty. And I think no matter what your age, I would like anyone to be in a situation where they're trying to build themselves a better

life but what you spend your nine to five or what you have developed a passion for is no longer a way to build yourself security of course that is going to affect your mental health i think when we we talk about young people's mental health a lot of the conversation seems to go like look for one reason and i hear a lot of like oh it's because they've been on screens or it's because um in covid they were inside too much or it's because they're self-finding diagnosing from TikTok videos. I think this is so much of a complex issue. There is not one thing.

And we have to look at all of these things and how we address them in order to help this generation. I think just to build on that as well, like I do think we have a loneliness epidemic in this country, which is intergenerational. But I think the ways that it affects young people are particularly pernicious because it's like the workplace is a form of community space as well. And actually, if you live like in my area, like if you live in a suburb in a semi-roven, in a semi-rural area, like in a new build house, and you work from home three days a week

and like a little box room in your house and you don't get the chance to speak to anybody. Really struck me a couple of weeks ago, a lady who lives in my local area just put on Facebook, does anybody want to come to this cafe and hang out? Because I've lived on this new build estate for like 10 years, and I don't have any friends here. And 40 women came to this cafe to hang out with each other. It speaks to the fact that we're more connected than ever before, but we're more atomized than ever before. And like, I'm not a doctor.

but I struggle to see how that can't have an impact on young people's mental health. And I actually, like, this reminds me because I definitely struggled with my mental health in like my kind of later adolescence. And I remember I was referred for a session at CAMS. Now I know you'd be very lucky to get a session and not have to wait on a really, really long waiting list, which is kind of another issue. And I was struggling with my body image, which is something I think a lot of young, there's probably a bit, there's different impacts of social media on young women and young men.

And I think body images affects both groups but in different ways. And I actually remember sitting down with a medical professional and like explaining to them why I was struggling with my body image so much. And it's because of things I'd seen online. And there was a complete language barrier. Like it was almost impossible to communicate the issues that you were going through, the things that you were seeing and how it was affecting your mental health. because they just weren't speaking, adults or older people were not speaking the same language as you. We've took too long to realize that how badly that language barrier has set it in.

And only now, really only because it's impacting work, because it's impacting what people are paying into the system, have we deeply looked at this issue? And I think the Milburn Review will look at it even more. But it shouldn't have taken this long. It's so frustrating that it's took for us to get to this place, for us to seriously think about the mental health crisis amongst young people. That brings me to a difficult question, Rosie, and thank you for sharing what you've been through, which is expectation versus reality, Instagram versus reality. I'm nearly 40 and I'm not immune to looking at people's lives on Instagram and feeling really, really depressed about my own.

But as we've discussed, our society has changed, our economy has changed. do you think younger generations, and I put myself in this bracket, need to adjust our expectations of what our lives are going to look like, but also how do we deal with the fact that so much of what we're all presented on social media is unrealistic to the point of being harmful? Good question. I think it's really difficult to know because you're only ever speaking from the perspective of your own echo chamber as somebody who is like, who is online. I don't think it's like young people need to sort of reduce their expectations of what the future of their life is going to look like based on what they've seen online. I say that because I think young people are pretty savvy to the fact that even though it can have a subconscious impact and like whether that be through body image or people's lifestyle definitely does have that. But I think we are much better as a cohort, as a generation at spotting that things are manufactured in a sense. I think that's important.

I actually think though that the anxiety about the future for young people doesn't stem from the fact that things aren't going to turn out how we want them to. and it's more it's just like a total blank space. Like it's really difficult to know as a young person in Britain what the next 30 years are going to look like because there are so many factors outside of this country that are going to affect that, whether that be the climate crisis, war, and instability. It feels incredibly uncertain,

and I think that's where the anxiety stems from. It's not like I'm not going to end up looking like this person with the perfect house and the perfect family on Instagram. It's more like, what the hell is this going to look like in its totality? I don't know. Maybe that's a strange way looking at it, but what do you reckon? The term expectations versus reality is like very interesting because it's something that gets equated to like, oh, I thought I was going to, I want to live like an influencer or content

creator and my life doesn't look like that. But I actually think most of the time it's like, oh, I wanted to be able to go on holiday and not max out my credit card and my life doesn't look like that. I think the expectations we were sold weren't just through our 4U pages, but actually from the trusted adults in our life. I also think, and I've spoken quite a lot about this in Parliament, the relationship with social media, the good and the bad, is something that isn't unique to Generation Z. And older people's relationship with social media, particularly isolated older people, is something that we have barely spoken about and can be kind of equally as concerning at points as well. I sometimes think that the issues of technology get kind of pushed onto younger people.

But what I have found, and even I would say with my own experiences, is younger people are quicker to spot AI and disinformation, are actually kind of craving analog and in-person experiences that maybe connects with social media as well, but actually are more sometimes aware of the addictiveness and can talk very confidently about the addictiveness in social media. in a way that I concerningly don't see from older generations. I also wonder whether we've kind of got the wrong lens on it

and whether we're sort of internalising a form of maybe like ageism by thinking that young people only want to aspire to what they see online. I think the reality is quite different. And what young people aspire to is probably what our parents and grandparents aspired to. And had. Yeah, it's like meaningful work, a safe place to live, a belief that your kids will be better off than you are.

You know, we could all aspire to maybe like be sat on a yacht off Zanti or whatever. But like fundamentally we've got basic needs. And like this whole conversation that we've had is about the fact that that social contract is broken and those needs aren't being met. And I think actually that's driving a lot of young people's political behavior, a lot of their anxieties about the future and rightly so. And also sometimes it gets frustrated because maybe I do aspire to have the latest trend of match up because buying a house is so unobtainable that actually this is just a little bit of. It's a light relief. What's interesting, when you put it like that, I mean, when the basic building blocks of a life are out of reach and you can't necessarily afford to go to the pub if your local pub hasn't shut down, scrolling through your phone at home doesn't cost you anything apart from your phone contract. So I can understand why people are kind of playing lifestyle sims on their own at home.

Yeah, exactly. But of course that's a recipe for misery. Okay, let's talk about the future and assume that there are some solutions to all of this. If you both are still MPs in 30 years time, hopefully you both keep your seats and you will be. Let's play some fantasy life creation here, a bit of Sims ourselves. What do you think we'll be discussing in Parliament and what do you think it will look like? Bit of like a strange answer, I guess. But one thing I would like to see is I'd love to see more people in Parliament.

I would love it to not be some sort of like radical thing that we've got a cohort of young MPs and for them to be, you know, questioning whether or not we're up to the job. What I would actually like to see is more young people outside of Parliament, but doing politically significant jobs. And I think that's one of the big questions about Andy Burnham's premiership is if he can play this right and get this like devolution revolution right about pushing power out of Westminster and down into local communities. Hopefully we get to a space where whether you're a local councillor

or you're a combined authority mayor, you've got the power, the responsibility, the status, the ability to change people's lives where young people actually see that as the route that they want to go down and not becoming a member of Parliament. Because it's such a narrow way to express yourself politically to go into politics in Britain at the moment because Parliament really is the way that you can make the most difference for the greatest amount of people. But if we've got young people who are mayors of different parts of the UK, I think that will be a lasting consequence, hopefully, of this government and a way that we can actually

inject some real equity and intergenerational fairness at the grassroots level across the UK. So that's what I hope we see. It's really interesting. I guess what I really don't want to see, and I will go on to what I do What I don't want to see is you sat here with two Gen Alpha MPs talking about how the state is going to need to intervene on their lives because something has gone wrong. And I think that this moment, not only should it be, but quite frankly, it has to be an important moment of how we're going to turn things around for the next generation. I think that Andy Burnham has, I've seen him acting with that urgency in a real understanding of what's at stake here. But also, I want us to say this is a generation that can have a passion to do something and be able to do it and live a good, prosperous life and a safe and secure life and be able to have a family if they choose to.

I don't think that's too much to ask for. I think the generations our parents are in had it. at a place where ambition and effort can give you a good life. And there are many different forms and policy areas. And we've definitely started to build that. But we need to urgently do it so that this is the moment that happened. So if we had to sort of have a final takeaway, let's go back to where we are right now. So we have a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has taken over from Kyr Starma.

He's got a slightly different approach. He's also really big on TikTok and Instagram. I'm seeing videos all the time. Do you think he can bridge the gap? Do you think this is the answer? I think if you reflect on when Andy Burnham was Mayor of Greater Manchester, one thing that he did was he did like a mayor's survey of young people where he asked every single young person he represented basically what they thought about

where they lived, how he could seek to improve their lives. The fact that he had that as his priority to ask a group of people who probably, you know, who wouldn't be able to even vote for him, I think. speaks to the fact that this is somebody whose politics transcends this like electoral bickering and goes to a deeper question about the future of our country. I think one challenge that we've had as a Labor government since 2024 is explaining that we get the scale of urgency in fixing some of these questions that are affecting young people. And that's a range of stuff about the economic questions around housing and childcare, whatever else. It's also the meta stuff about

like state of the world, the climate crisis. I think Andy Burnham both gets the urgency, but also understands Westminster enough to be able to act effectively to achieve change within that system. He's both like savvy, but he's also hopeful. And I think that's actually what you need. And a lot of other people can make a lot of other grand promises. But if they don't get how the system works and they're not unashamedly purposeful about getting it done, then you're not going to see results. So I'm really cautiously optimistic. Like the scale of the challenge is absolutely enormous. But I think he's got the optimism and the enthusiasm to get it done. Yeah, to Keir's point, Andy seems to bring people into the conversation. I think a lot of young

people, I definitely felt like this before I became an MP, feel like politics is something that kind of happens to them, not with them. He, using social media and different forums, seems to be bringing young people into the conversation about how we fix this problem, which I think is really, really, really, really welcome. Well, thank you both so much for being his state. It's really interesting. And I really hope I'm not here with you both in 30 years time, no offense, talking about the same problems. Hopefully some of them have been fixed. Let's try and end on a hopeful note. Do you have any cultural recommendations for trip listeners? Yeah, I studied and worked in fashion before I became an MP and it's fashion months.

So I feel like there's a lot of like culture that's going on. But in particular, this kind of nod to a revival of the Norties, VNA are doing a exhibition all about the Burberry coat. And I think it's a really good chance for the Gen Z and Gen Alpha to kind of be inspired by the culture. of an analogue world. Mine is not optimistic, but hopefully it is interesting. I find it as a politics nerd, right? You've got to be able to insert politics into everything that you watch. And I'm re-watching the Sopranos.

And it's funny how politics repeats itself and arguments repeat themselves. Tony Soprano spends the entire series grappling with this feeling that he came in at the end of something, that the best days are behind him. And a lot of what happens in that show is about him fighting for a better future, I guess. So I'm re-watching that and I can't help but see the politics of it in the 90s. So there we go. Bit of an alignment with Rosie's recommendation. Big end of a century energy in the Supranos.

And actually quite a lot of Burberry worn by Carmella. Indeed. Indeed.