In his poem Fire and Ice Robert Frost muses on how he hopes the world will end in the burning passions of desire, yet understands that hatred is a force equally capable of bringing about the apocalypse. At a moment when the UK – and the world – could be on the brink of a great collapse, Frost’s words feel particularly poignant. How can George Galloway be elected as an MP in Rochdale and there not be a feeling that the end is nigh?
Frost contends that hate and desire are the two truly catastrophic forces in the world. Perhaps the advent of George Galloway during the premiership of Rishi Sunak demonstrates this, although in this instance desperation may be a better fit than desire. The election of Galloway tells us that people are desperate. People have begged for a ceasefire in Gaza and the government has refused to listen. Galloway has wormed his way back onto the political scene by recognising this desperation and doing exactly what Labour and the Tories would not.
Galloway’s success is a microcosmic indicator of the state of the nation. The desperation that informed the Rochdale by-election is being felt across the country – and no deeper is it being felt than by my Gen Z contemporaries. We are the generation whose prospects and quality of life feel deeply threatened. Every election since 2010 – every election that my generation can remember – seems to have been underpinned by hate. The past decade and a half of Tory rule has gradually become more and more centred around hatred of the other. Hatred of the poor, of the foreign, of the subversive. The fearmongering we saw in Rishi Sunak’s speech on March 1 was this hate at its most distilled.
The country has collapsed into something approaching chaos. The only response is to fight back with a desperate desire for something different, for something better. Desire for something different, for people my age, has been transformed into a desperation for security. Young people are experiencing a crisis of housing, a crisis of employment, a crisis of mental health. Just as the people of Rochdale appear to have been so desperate for someone to call for a ceasefire that they voted for Galloway, so too will young people be turning away from our two major parties. With Sunak busy making transphobic jibes and scapegoating immigrants, and Keir Starmer busy not having an opinion, mavericks on the sidelines are going to become increasingly attractive.
We are £50,000 in debt, working minimum-wage jobs to pay rent we can’t afford
This isn’t to say there are no figures in the mainstream fighting for the desires of young people. The younger generation of Labour MPs is consistently demanding what we are calling for. Zarah Sultana, my local MP, is one of a handful of younger figures in the Labour party who has the guts to stand up for basics such as, say, human rights. She has campaigned to end child food poverty and for public workers to be paid liveable wages. She and her fellow Labour youngsters are trying to secure futures for our generation. But the rest of her party seems at best reluctant, at worst actively unwilling, to do the same.
The horrors in Gaza and our leaders’ refusal properly to condemn them has caused a politicisation of people my age the like of which I have not seen before. Jeremy Corbyn and his appeal to the young got people interested, maybe engaged. The past six months have made my contemporaries furious and active. Now is the time for politicians to start trying to appeal to our generation, to start representing us. Instead, we are consistently sidelined and ignored. We are £50,000 in debt from university, working multiple minimum-wage jobs to pay rent we can’t afford. Our futures look bleak. And almost no one in Parliament is doing anything about it.
A smart government would abandon a campaign laced with hatred and fearmongering. It would listen to our voices crying out in desperation and desire. We do not have that smart government. Instead, I believe, we are in for a year of growing disillusion. Rochdale will not be the last event of its kind. Radicals who give voice to what people are feeling will increasingly win platforms. If Labour and the Tories want to save themselves the embarrassment of losing elections to the likes of George Galloway, they must recognise that the public – and young people in particular– are losing faith.
Lily Webb is a recent Oxford University English graduate, currently writing and bartending
