Enraged or Engaged? Angela Rayner on The Gen Z Story

Former Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, joins Alastair Campbell and Vicky Spratt to discuss the Gen Z story as she sees it. Listen to hear her thoughts on the success of The Green Party, the allure of characters like Gary Stevenson and Zack Polanski, the hopelessness of young people, the danger of binary politics and short-term thinking, as well as her push for the government to reconnect with Gen Z and empower leaders of the future. She also listens and responds directly to some of your experiences sent to us via voice note. To hear episode one and two of the Gen Z Story, sign up at ⁠therestispolitics.com ⁠and if you're a student, sign up with your student email address to get a year of TRIP Plus for just £20. For analysis on this interview and more insights into the Gen Z Story series, sign up to our free newsletter. Instagram: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Twitter: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ __________ Hosted by: Vicky Spratt Producer: India Dunkley Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith, Lorcan Moullier Researcher: Olivia Taylor Hooper Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Editorial Director: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People feel like no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you try, the system is rigged against you and it's not working in your favour. If you're working or you're going to university, you're trying to do everything right to get a good job, to raise a family one day hopefully, to get your own home. They feel it's almost impossible and they're correct to feel that way.

• 0:19Vicky Spratt?

  We know our birth rate is falling. It's hit the lowest level since the Second World War. That's going to be a big problem for our welfare state. I was looking at it on a graph earlier. What we spend going like this, what we've got coming in is going like that. What then does the future look like?

• 0:34Alastair Campbell?

  I went to a pretty normal school and then went to Cambridge. Never at any point during the time I was at Cambridge was I even worrying about what I was going to do in the future.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  The secret is, is they've got power. They've got power in their communities, in their activism, in their demands. And we should be doing everything we can to show them that we're on their side.

• 0:57Vicky Spratt?

  Welcome back to the Gen Z Story with me, Vicky Spratt. Episode three this week and it is a must listen. We have got none other than former Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner. Now, this interview with Angela was done a couple of weeks ago at the Spotify Studios in central London. Alistair joined and we spoke to her before Labour's absolutely catastrophic local electoral results. And in some ways, I think some of the things we discussed were almost like we were looking into a bit of a crystal ball. Should Labour be worried about the Greens? Were young people going to turn to the Greens? What about the threat of reform? We also talked about whether politicians are a little bit cringe when they're trying

• 1:42Vicky Spratt?

  to talk to young people. Now, you won't have heard as much from Angela Rayner in the last eight months or so. That's because she was forced to resign as DPM and Housing Secretary over a scandal and a huge question mark about whether she paid enough tax when she bought a house in Brighton after putting her family home into a trust for her disabled son. She wasn't able to talk about that because there's an ongoing investigation with HMRC. We also asked her whether she fought Keir Starmer. Should stay as Prime Minister. She didn't want to talk about that. She said she had joined us to talk about young people because that is what she's really passionate about. And she went into detail on some of the things she'd done in government, on housing, for instance, renting, leasehold reform, planning reform, which she might not think of as a

• 2:26Vicky Spratt?

  Gen Z policy, but she explained why it is. And of course, her slightly contentious shake-up of workers' rights, in which there's a big shake-up of zero-hours contracts. And also, we talked about the minimum wage. Over the weekend, after Labour's losses have become clear, Angela has sent out a lengthy statement on Twitter. She said the government needs to change direction. She talked about some of the issues we cover in this podcast. I think this interview is actually even more interesting than I thought it was when we recorded it, because it is her setting out what she thinks we need to do to make sure that young people feel seen and heard in the future. Don't forget to listen to Episodes

• 3:08Vicky Spratt?

  One and Two, you can still catch up with those. This one is free to listen to. And it is like no political interview I've ever done before, because our audience, that's you, sent in their questions for Angela, and we were able to play out voice notes from trip listeners to her, and she was able to respond. So have a listen and let us know what you think.

• 3:38Vicky Spratt?

  Welcome back to your own podcast, Alastair Campbell.

• 3:41Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:42Vicky Spratt?

  Thanks for being here. And thank you for joining us, Angela Rayner.

• 3:47Vicky Spratt?

  My pleasure.

• 3:48Vicky Spratt?

  Deputy Prime Minister, former Housing Secretary, the architect of somewhat contentious legislation, renters' rights, employment rights, and mother of Gen Zs.

• 3:59Vicky Spratt?

  I am, yes. Three Gen Zs.

• 4:01Alastair Campbell?

  You know what's really interesting? When Vicky was doing this series, and we were thinking about we need to get a political voice. I think it's an indication of the problem, that it was really hard to think about an obvious person. Now, have we missed anybody, do you think? Do you think there's anybody you look at Parliament and think they're really on it on the Gen Z stuff?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Um, there's a couple of Gen Zs in Parliament.

• 4:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  As well, so I think there are, there are some out there, definitely. Cause I think there are particular issues that generation feel, but they're not dissimilar to the real challenges that I think most people feel at the moment.

• 4:34Alastair Campbell?

  But it just felt to me that it, it, it underlined there's a kind of real problem about politics still feeling like it's an older person's game. And that young people aren't in the debate in the way that they should be.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  I think people want to try and push it that way, and I'm sure we'll touch on some of those issues, like some of the pushback to votes at 16, which is again, one of my bills that is going through Parliament and which I was felt really strongly about. So I think that there is pushback to some of that, but actually I think the challenge is that those Gen Zs, they're, I'm a grandma now, you know, they're grandmas, they're parents, they're feeling the challenge of what their youngsters are, are, are experiencing. So I think some are trying to pitch generations against each other, whereas actually I think the diagnosis and the challenge is the same. And that's that people feel like no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you try, the system is rigged against you and it's not working in your favour.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  And that's having an impact on parents who you might argue are better off, who own their own properties, who are given the opportunities of the jobs that were created for an industry for life. So they're seeing their youngsters and seeing that missed opportunity for them. So they're starting to cotton on and say, well, I don't want that for my children. I certainly don't want that for my grandchildren. So I think it's a problem for everyone and I think people are starting to cotton on, because it's not just the one or two. It's like that whole generation at the moment feel no matter how much you run on the treadmill, you're not going to make it.

• 6:02Alastair Campbell?

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• 7:02Alastair Campbell?

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• 7:11Rory Stewart?

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• 7:13Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 7:25Rory Stewart?

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• 7:49Alastair Campbell?

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• 8:12Speaker 05

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• 8:27Vicky Spratt?

  We haven't heard as much from you recently over the last eight months or so. What made you decide to come and talk to us about 14 to 29 year olds?

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Because they're our future. And, you know, like I say, I've got skin in the game. I've got three of them at home. And I think that they need to feel that politics is for them. I go around schools all the time and colleges. And the frustration for me is that they feel like, no matter how hard they try, they can't change the system. Whereas actually, they don't realise how much power they've got. And the movement, you know, I grew up and found the trade union movement. There's lots of movements like that where people are involved. And I think that they need to feel that it's not just about activism. It's about being able to change things and having an investment in our future. Because more and more young people are feeling like there isn't an investment in their future now.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  We're seeing people who get qualifications, nurses, doctors, who are moving abroad. They're going to Australia or they're going to Spain. And they feel that there isn't the investment in them for their skills and what they can bring to the table going forward. So they need to know that the secret is, is they've got power and they need to be able to utilise that. And we've got to also acknowledge that and speak on their behalf.

• 9:42Vicky Spratt?

  There's quite a lot of pushback against votes for 16 year olds. Lots of people didn't think you can vote at 16, you're not informed enough.

• 9:50Alastair Campbell?

  Including some young people. But listen, I go into loads of schools, you know, and the real worry I've got at the moment from a Labour perspective is we're giving the vote to these younger people. And right now, I mean, I was in a school the other day. And I would say there were quite a few hundred girls and boys there. They're all, they all said they're going to vote. And I would reckon it's going to be 60 Green, 20 Reform.

• 10:19Alastair Campbell?

  And twenty

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Whoever.

• 10:20Alastair Campbell?

  Midstretorian Labour, yeah. So for Labour to have done that.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 10:24Alastair Campbell?

  And then for that to be the current mood, I'm not saying that's universal, it was in a, you know, pretty affluent area. But even so, I think that is alarming from your perspective.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  It is, but that's alarming across the board. So I think people at sixteen should have the right to vote. I had my child when I was sixteen. Paid taxes. I think it's important that they have a stake in it. I think there's a question on political education. And making sure that people are informed about the vote. I think there's a question around the extremism of what's happening, the polarization. Of politics at the moment, you can't respectfully disagree anymore. It's you either have to be binary, you're that or you're that. I don't like that in my own. Political movement, let alone beyond the boundaries of that. I think often, like, you know, people are talking about topical at the moment around. Um, mobile phones and online harm, et cetera. You know, when I speak to, I've got a sixteen year old who's nearly seventeen.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  One that's just turned eighteen and I've got a twenty nine year old and the younger ones, they're more savvy. They've grew up with the internet. They've grown up with social media, so they they can distinguish between some of it. But the challenge is, is that the wider discourse in politics at the moment is you can't have a nuanced position. And that I find quite worrying. It's either a soundbite, a clickbite or whatever. And therefore, if you try and explain something that is a bit more complex, that it's not just a, okay, well, for example, get Brexit done. Okay, right, we get Brexit done. That's it. It's binary. You're either for it or you're against it. There's a lot of complexities in getting Brexit done, but you try and do a nuanced position of, well, can we talk about what that means?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  And then people switch off. And I think the way in which people, my kids don't watch TV. It's YouTube clips or it's TikTok or it's social media. So the the way in which society is changing, this is not just youngsters. You know, even the older generation now, we're all flicking through our phones to get to digest things as quickly as possible.

• 12:21Alastair Campbell?

  Politics hasn't adapted to the same pace.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  It hasn't, no. And therefore what's happening is the challenge is really trying to get below the soundbite.

• 12:28Vicky Spratt?

  Yeah, can you do Brexit in sixty seconds on TikTok? That is the way we're going.

• 12:32Alastair Campbell?

  It's a total fucking disaster. We should never have done it. Now that we've done it, we should undo it.

• 12:35Vicky Spratt?

  And that was fifteen seconds.

• 12:37Alastair Campbell?

  Will do.

• 12:38Vicky Spratt?

  One of the traps we really did not want to fall into with this series is talking about Gen Z without talking to them, right? So we actually, we polled your audience. Twelve thousand people responded, six thousand of them were Gen Zs. So I think let's hear from them because it is, it is scary out there and I, I do worry about the way we are in this clique economy. But the voice notes that the Rest is Politics younger listeners have sent in have actually given me a lot of hope because they are super informed.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  I think things are pretty bleak for my generation. You know, we've got a stagnant economy alongside booming markets and asset price inflation, which is great if you've already got wealth. But if you don't have anything, it's pretty shit alongside this underemployment and a lack of entry level jobs due to the potential of AI to take, to replace them. And these are the exact entry level jobs that my generation need to get a footing in the job market. So it kind of feels like there's, there's no way for us to get in, you know, and who's, who's on our side out here? It's Gary Stevenson and it's Zack Polanski. The institutions and the institutional voices are failing us.

• 13:43Vicky Spratt?

  That was Billy.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I can understand what Billy's saying and it comes back to my point about this instant sort of, there has to be a quick answer to it. And there has to be a villain and there has to be a savior, whereas actually a lot of these things are more complex than that. But people do feel that the system is rigged against them and quite rightly so, because if you're working or you're trying to, you're going to university, you're trying to do everything right to get a good job, to raise a family one day, hopefully to get your own home. It's almost, they feel it's almost impossible and, and they're correct to feel that way. If you look at the wages now comparable to mortgage before, it's completely out of, out, out of reach for most people now. So they're putting off having a family.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  They're coming out of university in huge amounts of debt and as Billy says, AI and the future, they just feel so insecure. They don't see the path. We're not as politicians being able to give them the path at the moment that says, you know what? This is, if you do these things, opportunities are there for you. And that's one of the things that I feel quite passionate about because I was given opportunities. I grew up in poverty. But I was given opportunities and the state provided opportunities for me to be able to get myself out of that. People who are in poverty at the moment, we talk about the poverty trap, they're not. And the Generation Z are in that same position. They are not given the means to be able to fight that rigged system. And therefore, they want that sugar rush, they want that release.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  We were on election, we voted, people voted for change. I think this generation feel that they're being saddled with the challenges of what happened with Brexit, with the Covid pandemic, with with all of these issues, the economic crash that happened. This generation slowly are seeing the erosion of any length of security for them to be able to do well in life.

• 15:32Vicky Spratt?

  And Billy mentioned asset price inflation, housing, and you and I got to know each other when you when you were Housing Secretary. And we talked at length about all the things you were you were going to do, and you have have done a lot of it. The government has done it, you did it when you were in post, renters' rights, leasehold reform. But it's still not going to fix this problem we've got, where like in the nineties, when New Labour were in power, the average house price was three or four times the average wage. Now it's eight times.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 16:00Vicky Spratt?

  And you've you've got members of Gen Z living in your house. We know that they are more likely to be living with their parents than owning a home of their own, more likely to be able to get on to what we used to call the housing ladder. I don't think that exists anymore. If you've got parents who can help you.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Exactly. Well, wages haven't kept up. If you look at what the average wage is today, comparable to what the costs of housing, et cetera, it's not kept up at all. So the gaps widened. And we've had a supply side problem. This has been built up over a significant period of time. And, you know, you're absolutely right to mention, I've rebalanced some of the challenges that renters face, you know, around challenging rent hikes, that they can only do it annually, and making sure that people can't get no-forty victions, which is coming in May. So we're doing things and we're making the changes. But the challenge is this has been slowly creeping up for some time. It's not something that is just suddenly happened. And therefore, anyone who says there's just an instant fix to it, it's not true.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  You have to do the hard yards. And that's why I put the Employment Rights Act in place. That's why I put the lease and commonhold reforms. That's why I put the Renters' Rights Act in place. That's why we put more money into social and affordable housing than we have done in a very long time. It's why I made the changes to Right to Buy. It's why I made the change into planning reform. And I took on those that said we shouldn't be building more homes because we need to start getting on track again. But Gen Z are the generation that feel like, are we going to fall between the gaps? So that's why I was, you know, I took on more legislation than any other Secretary of State. I was in a rush. And I've said it in interviews before, is it's like picking between your children. If you said, well, which bit of the decent home standards, the renters or the employment, which bit's the most important?

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Well, I couldn't pick between because they all were needed in order to make the change that people needed to feel.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  But if we were to talk in detail to the thousands of people who've responded, how much of what you've done and what the government is doing are they even aware of? And I don't know whether that's just a communications issue. I think most people are aware that you've got this very, very ambitious house building goal. I think most people have the view that it's not going to be met. And therefore, in theory, the planning reform's great, but is it going to happen? We do still have a kind of big NIMBY problem.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:18Alastair Campbell?

  And that's playing out all around the country at the moment. And I think that is also part of this intergenerational battle between people who have not necessarily, even if they understand it, wanting to see the measures taken that will help the people who are saying, hold on a minute, we're here too.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, again, I think that we've not helped ourselves in our communications. I think, you know, the challenge is how do we communicate? And how do we cut through with the issues that people really care about? I don't think we've been able to do that successfully. And we have to change. I think you mentioned it before about our politicians waking up to this new reality of how people digest the news, how people get information. I don't think we have yet. I think we're evolution rather than revolution. And then we're going to be left behind like the dinosaurs if we haven't been able to grasp that net. And I think it's something that we need to be aware of. And I think it's just.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  I'm considered a character. I don't think I'm a character. I think I'm, in fact, I think I'm quite boring compared to what Angie of nineteen or twenty nine was. I'm a very different person in terms of my lifestyle, et cetera. But characters cut through and soundbites cut through. And therefore, how you make the argument on some of the things we're doing when actually it doesn't happen overnight. So, you know, I am creating the basis of change that will pay dividends to the next generation. The reforms we're making now will help and they will alleviate some of the challenges. But it's not going to happen overnight. There is some things like, you know, the no fault convictions that will have an impact and it will have an impact quite quickly.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  But there's other things that the real ingrained problem is like we've, we've been sugar rushing on short termism. So we've not invested in infrastructure. We've not invested in housing. We've not invested in the industries of the future. We've been too slow and too, I want a soundbite, I want a quick thing. Well, the real infrastructure investment and the investment in Britain and making sure that our regulations are fit for purpose as well for the challenges that we face going forward. We're just not quick enough and nimble enough in this world, in this age, to make that change that people want to see. And what worries me about that is if you look at populism, so whether it's the Greens or Reform or others, is that we're going to end up in this situation again where people feel, okay, they're offering, like we did, we offered change.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  And people's expectation is, you better deliver it. This is what you said. And if it's not delivered quickly in the way in which news cycles deliver these days, then people are going to become more and more frustrated that they'll feel that politics doesn't work for them. And that politicians are out of touch or that politicians don't understand the challenges that they face. And therefore, people become more and more despondent. And it's like a vicious cycle then to go to more and more extremes to get what you are demanding that you feel is not happening in the political system.

• 21:12Vicky Spratt?

  It is interesting because a lot of the legislation we're talking about that really speaks to some of the issues Billy's feeling right in his day to day life. They are really complicated. Acts of Parliament bills that are going through. Leasehold in particular is really, really hard to understand and it's my, my main job to try and understand it.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  And it's full of minefields. So for example, on this, me and Michael Gough, you know, the Tory secretaries.

• 21:36Vicky Spratt?

  An unlikely alliance.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  An unlikely alliance. We both were at the Select Committee recently, touching on the issue of leasehold and the bill that's going through Parliament. And there's a balancing act between trying to ram the legislation through and getting it right. So the unintended consequences don't happen. And also around the potential pitfalls of legal challenge for not doing it in the correct way. Now, that doesn't gratify people instantly. It looks like you're making excuses or it looks like you just don't want to do it. But actually, there are some real, as you say, complex issues as to making sure that you get it right and that you're able to deliver for people.

• 22:13Vicky Spratt?

  But it's interesting that it's not communicated in that way, right? No one's talking about leasehold as though that's going to help Gen Z, even though it is. Renters' rights maybe a bit more so, but still not really. Employment rights, we can get to in a minute in, in detail, but they're not sold as here are our policies for future. Here's our new deal for young people. Because when we were chatting about those policies, we were like, oh, actually, yeah, they are for young people, but you don't, you don't think of it that way.

• 22:38Alastair Campbell?

  I don't have any sense from the, from any of the parties, and you mentioned Polanski. I think it's a vibe that people like about him. I think, you know, when, when we had him sitting there not long ago and, you know, when you really press him on policy, there's not much there. But as you say, he's got, he's, what he's got is a really good vibe and he makes people think he's talking about.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Well, that's the populism. That's what Farage does as well.

• 23:01Alastair Campbell?

  Totally.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  It's like, just say it and it will happen.

• 23:04Alastair Campbell?

  Right, but.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  But it doesn't.

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  No, you're now in government, Labour's now in government. And a lot of these things, even the things that are happening.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 23:14Alastair Campbell?

  I would argue it's not out there that they're, they're happening on behalf of young people.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  And that's our failure and, and you know, you were part of the previous Labour government where you did have the youth guarantee scheme. You did make it a package for, for young people. We've talked about women as well and, you know, violence against women and girls and issues that women face, et cetera. And trying to really speak to the audiences that we're trying to cater for. We haven't quite got there with the young people yet. We haven't been able to package these measures that we're taking that shows actually. The the long term investment that we're doing will have an impact on younger people, more so than the older generation, but we we haven't packaged it in that way, and that's our failure to do so.

• 23:59Vicky Spratt?

  And actually, Zack Polanski and the Green Party are talking about abolishing landlords, which I think is quite an impossible thing to do.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Well, it is impossible.

• 24:07Vicky Spratt?

  Wouldn't necessarily actually be good, but you say it and people are like, oh, yeah, I hate my landlord.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Hmm. Whereas actually, there's some really good landlords out there. You know, I said that when I was bringing in the bill, you know, there are some good landlords out there and we do want them. But the question mark is now is that people can't make an empowered decision, even when they're working hard, even when they studied hard, they are not empowered to make a decision. Do I want to be a renter? Can I live off what my money is, bearing in mind that most of my wage is going on rent? If I want to be a homeowner, can I have the option to be a homeowner? The generation before me, they chose to be renters if they wanted to be renters. They chose to buy if they wanted to buy. They had a choice. If I'm working, I had a choice to decide what I wanted to be. That choice is completely removed for Gen Z.

• 24:53Vicky Spratt?

  I want to play you Asha because it really sums up what what you're saying there, like she should have the world at her feet and she just doesn't.

• 25:01Speaker 07

  Hi, my name's Asha. I'm twenty two years old. I'm working part time as a barista and as a tutor for GCSE students. I graduated with a first class degree in history and politics from the University of Cambridge. And after that, I studied for an NCTJ qualification in journalism. I'm feeling a mixed bag about the world right now. I don't come from wealth or connections, but I'm lucky to live at home, especially because there aren't a lot of entry level jobs right now. The rental market is in crisis and I don't know if I'll ever be able to own a home in my own right or have a family in the way I envisioned. It sort of feels like a cap to the stream. I was sold. But on the other hand, I feel so much hope in the families, the communities around me, the people in my life. And I organise with the London Renters Union.

• 25:46Speaker 07

  And the kind of community that I see struggling against these systems gives me a lot of hope. So I feel cynical about the future I was promised, but hopeful about the people around me and our ability to change things. So it's, yeah, a bit of a conflict.

• 26:01Vicky Spratt?

  She's living in Ilford in her parents' house, which they do own, but she can't afford to move out.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  You see, what I love about that is that point I was making before about. They've got power and they've got power in their communities, in their activism, in their demands, and we should be empowering more and we should be doing everything we can to show them that we're on their side. And at the moment, I think that we are doing work on that, but we're failing to be able to take that forward in a way that they know I'm on their side.

• 26:32Alastair Campbell?

  But also, isn't what she's saying that the social, I mean, I'm older than you, but the social contract that kind of bound our generations together, I've been listening to it, because when I, I went to a pretty normal school and then went to Cambridge, never at any point during the time I was at Cambridge was I even worrying about what I was going to do in the future, because I knew that I'd do something.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:53Alastair Campbell?

  I knew that if I went through it and, you know, got a degree, I just knew that I'd have choices.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  And I did.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:03Alastair Campbell?

  And I never, ever worried about not having, she's working in a cafe.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:06Alastair Campbell?

  And having to, you know, scrabble around getting.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 27:09Alastair Campbell?

  People who want to pot hats their kids in the GCSEs.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  But that's because, like, we're doing things on, you know, we're investing in defence, we're investing in renewable energy, we're bringing the new industries forward, but we've deferred all of these, we didn't even build reservoirs, we need reservoirs so that we can then build the houses, so we can build the data centres, so we can build the infrastructure that we desperately need. We failed to do that, we failed to invest in the grid that will link up the businesses. We've, we've had a failed industrial strategy for the last 14 years, so we've, we've put off decisions or we've not been agile enough to make decisions, which has slowed down the pace of us being able to give opportunities for people. Now, that doesn't happen overnight, but we've started to put the investment in

• 27:53Speaker 00

  and start to make the difference for people. But I can understand how if you've gone to university or you've done everything right and then you end up, as you see it, in a situation where you're never going to be out of that, as I call it, that poverty trap. And that is because we haven't invested in industry, we've not invested in infrastructure and we've not created those opportunities. So, house prices have gone up because we've not dealt with the supply side, those jobs have not come and that investment's not come because we haven't got the infrastructure to deliver it. The government hasn't played a role. I believe in an active state to help the private sector.

• 28:25Vicky Spratt?

  When you hear the young people that I've played out talking though. It's gonna take years for all of this to work out, assuming that it does. Is there a risk that we've now got a generation who are gonna be scarred as they enter into their thirties and forties? Cause I I'm thirty eight, right? I've got a one bedroom flat, really grateful that I was able to buy that, but that's not where I thought I would be living at thir- thirty eight years old. And I'm looking at what it will take to have a bigger house. Potentially, it's gonna be in the next few years, but I'm approaching forty. And would I have had children already if I'd had a house sooner? We know our birth rate is falling, it's hit the lowest level since the Second World War.

• 29:08Vicky Spratt?

  People are not having children, that's gonna be a big problem for our welfare state. I was looking at it on a graph earlier, what we spend's going like this, what we've got coming in's going like that.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 29:17Vicky Spratt?

  And if, let's take Asher and Billy, you know, they're living at home in their twenties, they get out later than I did, maybe in their thirties. What what then does the future look like?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  So I agree with you about in terms of, do people feel like that becomes a lost generation? And that was my concern and why I'm impatient for the change, and I make no apologies of of that, of what we said we were gonna do. And I've described it as we need to put rocket boosters up our manifesto, because that's where you get the confidence, that's where you drive the investment.

• 29:46Alastair Campbell?

  Say about something else.

• 29:47Vicky Spratt?

  Yeah, me too, actually.

• 29:48Alastair Campbell?

  Great moment, yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, well.

• 29:51Alastair Campbell?

  Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  So I just think, you know, that's that's where you get the change. And and the reason why I'm so passionate about that is my mum was a lost generation, she was illiterate. She wasn't of a generation where she could be a single parent if she needed to be. And, you know, there were things that we got that helped us, like we had council houses, so I was never gonna be evicted from my home and things like that, which I feel passionate that gave me opportunities. But I think my mum was lost to the system, and that really upsets me, because my mum could have been so much more than she was. But within a couple of generations, we've we've corrected that. You know, I could have at sixteen, less school, without any qualifications, I could have been written off, and that's it. And I could have ended up on the same path as my mother.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  But actually, the interventions of the state supported me and gave me a second chance. And this is as true for Gen Z, not just because of a lot of the challenges they face and not of their making, but it's true for everyone. It's why I was a real big passion. For lifelong learning when I was Shadow Education Secretary, because I do think that you shouldn't write people off, people should be given, and the challenges we face as an economy, as a workforce is, you're not going to be in the same job. It's very rare now that you leave school, you get an apprenticeship, or you go to university, you get a job. It is very rare that that person is staying with the same company or staying in the same industry. People will have to adapt and therefore the state needs to provide those opportunities. And that's

• 31:16Speaker 00

  why I'm really passionate about delivering for people. And I share the optimism from the girl from Ilford as well in terms of, actually, if we demand it, I think we could do it. If we're realistic about some of the immediate changes we could do, and we can, but also about actually level with the public. If we're really going to turn things around, it's not, it's not like, oh, well, I click me fingers and it happens, or somebody else is going to do that for me. It's a, it's a collective endeavour to deliver it.

• 31:44Alastair Campbell?

  But just on that, as you say, you came in on the platform of change. I mean, Keir Starmer's constantly saying this is going to take time, these things don't happen overnight. And it's very difficult to take people on that journey unless they're very clear about where the destination is. And right now, they don't, they're not clear about their destination. And one other thing, you know, a lot of the people who, you've heard one of them already, but a lot of people have got in touch, really worried about AI, not sure where it's going, not sure where it's going to lead the country or the world. And yet, I don't have any sense of that debate happening in Parliament.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. So first of all, you're right, we're not showing them the destination. We're saying it's hard, but we're not saying, well, okay, what is the hard and where are we going? So I think that's a real challenge for us. And we've not shown our values in some of the decisions that have been made. So people have felt that the sense of, so for example, the winter fuel allowance, the sense of unfairness and that doesn't speak to who you are. So that people feel that, well, we're not sure about you on that.

• 32:42Alastair Campbell?

  Gen Z probably think that pensioners are treated very, very, very well. And they are.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  They are, but they, but they also feel that some of the decisions that our government have made are not speaking to our values. And that's pretty clear. You can see that with what's happened in the war in Gaza. They feel that we've not stuck to our values on that. I think Gen Z in particular feel pretty strongly about that. I think the public, it's not a sense of are you one side or another, it's are you right or wrong? Are you standing up for our principles of international law? And, and, and they feel quite passionate about that. And that's blown us off course. And it's, it's created a serious amount of damage for us because you've got to have passion, you've got to have a heart as well as a head. And you've got to take people with you on that. And, and I think that that is the challenge for us, that we failed at this moment in time, we've been failing to meet that challenge.

• 33:31Vicky Spratt?

  It's interesting because it's not just the housing ladder that's collapsed, right? It is the career ladder. But how do you package up what you are doing to speak to young people? Because one thing, I mean, was laughing about it with, with our Gen Z producer, but Drake memes to explain the Renters Rights Act. The Drake meme is really out of date. I remember, I remember that being a thing like three years ago. And that was coming out of government.

• 33:56Alastair Campbell?

  It's so out of date, you're gonna have to tell them what it is.

• 33:58Vicky Spratt?

  It's just, it's just a meme of Drake. It's just Drake going like this. It's a Renters Rights.

• 34:03Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 34:03Vicky Spratt?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Alastair Campbell?

  Is that what the government used?

• 34:05Vicky Spratt?

  Yeah, to, to publicise it. But it felt like, it felt quite patronising.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, my lad, my, my 16 year old says, if you can't do a decent video, don't bother mum. It's like, really, it's, it's many of your colleagues, he's like, this is just cringe. It's like, it's so painful that you're not actually getting your message across. You're just showing your inability to try and get down with the kids. So if you're not with the kids, you might as well be what you are. At least don't try and be something you're not. You've got to speak to them, but he's, he's saying like, I think he's got a point is you've got to lean into what you are, you know, and, and then try and, you know, take, listen and try and respond to that. Don't try and be down with the kids if you're not down with the kids. Because that's just a bit cringey.

• 34:48Vicky Spratt?

  There's a danger we're really patronising this generation as well, right? Because they are the most indebted generation in history if they went to university. They are graduating with an average of £50,000. Worth of debt nine thousand pounds a year. I paid three, you paid.

• 35:02Alastair Campbell?

  Zero.

• 35:03Vicky Spratt?

  Zero, there we go. And, you know, it's a huge amount of money. Then they're looking at interest.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  And it's the psychology of that. So, cause I talk about like in my household, you'd be frightened of debt. So even though people say, well, if you don't earn enough, you won't pay it back, or some people will never pay it back. But it's the psychology of that hanging around your neck at the same time as the insecurity of can I find a job? And is there a job security for us going forward? It's why, so an example is there is a lot of kickback to the living wage going up, the minimum wage and my employment rights act. I make no apology. People should be able to know if they're going to get guaranteed hours because you can't get a mortgage. You can't have security about whether you're going to raise a family if you're on a zero hour contract.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Or if you'll pay is meaning you're having to visit a food bank, even though you're working. And that is the reality for people at the moment. Young people in particular are starting out in jobs. And the money that they're earning is not enough for them even to pay the basics. And, and that is a real challenge for us at the moment. It's that point I made before around wages not keeping up with the cost. And there's two things you need to do. Of course, you need to create the environment for business. That's why I say about infrastructure and some of the other changes that we could make. But also you've got to do the long-term investment in housing and et cetera, because that's how you bring down the supply problem. Cause we have a supply problem in this country. And I think this is also choking off the economy as well.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Because it's a vicious circle. If people haven't got money to spend or people don't have job security, then that's going to impact on the everyday economy. Because people are going to say, actually, it's unpredictable, not sure, I'm not going to stretch myself to buy that. I'm not going to stretch myself to have a child because I don't know if I'm going to be able to afford the child. So it really has a choking effect. So therefore giving the confidence and creating the environments where people can feel. I, I, I just get really upset about, you know, people in work having to get handouts or having to go to food banks. Or because it takes away, it strips you away your dignity. And that, that psychology of that.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Like I was so proud of myself when I was able to provide a home for my son. Like my parents were never able to do that for me. That sense of pride of me going out to work and my wages being able to help provide for my family gave me a sense of self-worth that my mum had choked away from her because she didn't have those opportunities. And the psychology of that, I think, holds the nation back when people feel that they they are pushed down, punched down, and they are in this trap of poverty, a system that feels rigged against them, and they feel that nothing changes for them. And that's why I'm always trying to fight them because I believe politics

• 38:02Speaker 00

  does change people's lives. It changed my life. It doesn't happen overnight, but it does make a difference. And there's things we can do and the activism of young people saying, I'm not having this. I expect this to change and being part of that change, not expecting someone else to go, hey, I'm gonna do it for you. But actually being part of that delivery of change, I think will make a huge difference. It'll make a difference to the confidence of the economy. It'll make a difference to the psychology of the nation.

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• 40:26Vicky Spratt?

  We asked the Gen Z audience of The Rest Is Politics to describe themselves and the words that came up the most have really, really stayed with me. Misunderstood, resilient, lost, unlucky, anxious and fucked.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's savage.

• 40:44Vicky Spratt?

  That's how that's how they're feeling, right? And I think if you if you've gone to uni, you've taken on all that debt. You are now learning what RPI is because it's the interest rate on your loan, which they've been capped at 6%, but it's still 6% on a £50,000, £70,000 loan. That is a lot of money every month in interest, hundreds of pounds. And then you're having to use a food bank or you're working multiple jobs. I think I'd feel quite fucked too.

• 41:09Alastair Campbell?

  But you're also seeing a level of wealth

• 41:13Vicky Spratt?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Alastair Campbell?

  amongst other people, including their own generation, the kids of the wealthy and all that stuff. They're seeing, so I think it's the fact that we haven't addressed, and it's not just this government, you know, but we're not addressing the the core inequality in the way that's widening. And I think the reason people are so scared of the tech revolution is because they think that's going to widen it. Rather than help it.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:33Alastair Campbell?

  And especially with the sort of characters we've got in charge of it, you know, if you've got Elon Musk and Bezos and these guys as the big drivers of technological change, don't expect it to.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  That's why we've got to have an active state.

• 41:45Vicky Spratt?

  Well, let me play you Luke. Let me play you Luke on this, because he's got, he's got stuff to say about what's, what's going on with tech. So Luke is from Ipswich. He's not living at home.

• 41:55Speaker 11

  Hi, my name is Luke. I'm 27, I live in Ipswich and I am a video editor. I think that one of the things that young people specifically have it really quite difficult with is this very easy parallel that you can draw to previous generations where men back then could support whole families off of a single income in a way that I can't. And I don't think many other young men can. And, and it's not necessarily unique to Gen Z in that sense. I think that's a very millennial thing too. But this is all in congruence with the internet having quite greatly developed and, and in my opinion worsened. You can just so transparently see a lot of the world's problems at an arm's distance now.

• 42:35Speaker 11

  And that can really compound a lot of the anxieties and concerns and stresses and frustrations that young people are facing. But I think young men especially are really quite susceptible to things like the manosphere and things that want to take these ideas and manipulate and weaponize them as well.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  I agree, but this comes back to that psychology. It comes back to your point you made before when you surveyed the Gen Z and some of the adjectives that they described themselves of. It's this feeling of powerless. It's this feeling that the frustration of them not being able to get beyond the rig system or that things are against them. And it comes back to that psychology then. Whereas actually, um, you know, coming back to the lady from Ilford is like, we need to have a psychology in the, in Britain that says we're confident, we're confident as a country. Yes, there's hard challenges, there's global challenges that we face and there's challenges that are unique to us. Now, we can be frustrated and thinking nothing's ever going to change.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  You can pull, try and pull a populist lever and say, I'll just break glass and hope that something happens that's good. Or you could actually say, here's the path of how we get there, and this is how we're going to do it together. And that's the path that I'm choosing because I know how that affected my life and I'm really passionate about it. And actually, you know, the people in Alastair's government at the time, when he was there, they didn't know how much their policies were affecting girls like me. It wasn't just about the fact that the tax credits or going back to free education, adult education in the evening. It wasn't just, it wasn't just a fact of those policies, it was the psychology. My mum stayed in a marriage that was not good for her. I didn't, I don't have to do that. I

• 44:22Speaker 00

  was a single mum. The state, the generation before me, if you had a child at my age and you tried to raise your child, forget it. They were put up for adoption. The state enabled me to be a mother and to have the tools to support myself and the psychology of that. I can't measure it for you, apart from I became Deputy Prime Minister of the country off a council estate. That, that's what we need to do. We need to inject that level of confidence in, in our economy, in our people, that people feel like, yeah, we can do this together. And there's people on my side fighting for it. I want my kids to feel, you know, my 29-year-old, he doesn't live at home anymore. I'm a guarantor for

• 45:07Speaker 00

  his rent because he needs a guarantor. He's a renter. He's got no opportunity at the moment to buy a property. He works really long hours. He provides for his, his family. He's on a very low income. It's really difficult for him. You know, he had a problem with his teeth. He had to ask me to borrow to get his teeth done so he could, he was in a hell of a lot of pain. He's trying to work, trying to raise his family. He can't even afford a dentist, you know. These everyday things that people are challenged with at the moment. My point is it's the psychology of that. It's the psychology of my son. Having to come to me when he's working, when he's an absolute brilliant dad, he's looking after his family. But the psychology of him having to come to his mum or ask somebody else for help.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  That's not a system that we should be enduring at the moment. That is not a system that the Gen Z should have to accept. Because I think that is a long drag on the economy. I think it's a long drag on our wellbeing as a country. Is when we, when we push and punch people down and they feel that no matter how hard they work, the system is going to be rigged against them.

• 46:15Vicky Spratt?

  I suppose there is an argument that two thousand and eight changed a lot, right? It did change before that, wages were going up, the economy was growing, it gets called the nice era. And I graduated in twenty ten into a recession, so I remember how much things changed and psychology is everything, right? Like the word, sorry to keep swearing on your podcast, Alistair, but the word.

• 46:34Alastair Campbell?

  We never do that normally.

• 46:35Vicky Spratt?

  The word that Gen Z keep, you know, use to describe themselves as fucked. And I remember growing up under New Labour, getting a maintenance grant, not a loan, to go to university. Because at the time, my family weren't doing very well. If I had done that now, I'd just have double the amount of debt as one of my richer fellow students. But the psychology of that and what it must feel like.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 46:59Vicky Spratt?

  To, to know like, oh, well, because I haven't got rich parents, everything's just going to be harder for me. But we've let this fester, because I've been covering it since I started out as a journalist, starting to feel like I'm screaming into the void. We've let it fester for twenty years and now it's so serious that you've got someone with a first from Cambridge, living at home, working two jobs.

• 47:21Alastair Campbell?

  And the other thing that Vicky went through the words that Gen Z says about themselves. Vicky was showing me earlier, the word that our generations say about Gen Z is entitled as a number one.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  I mean, that is just. I don't see that because you can see the inequality that exists. And, you know, I speak to the older generation and even the, the argument around the triple lock. So that gets raised quite a lot. When I speak to the older generation, they're like, well, okay, you want to take the triple lock off of. That's all right if it was going direct to that younger generation. I can see it. You want it to go in a black hole because incompetence of politicians. They don't see that intergenerational. They're like, you want us to take a hit. Okay. I'm happy to do that for my grandkids and for the next generation. But I'm not certain that that's what's going to happen. We're going to take hit and they're still going to be screwed.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  So there is this argument around being able to see government that can be effective at changing people's lives. I think that there is. We did do Sure Start and it benefited. We did, yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  We did do EMAs and it benefited Vicky. We do, and that's why I keep, that's why I keep screaming about it. That's why I said we need to do more of those things. And I think that people could see that. And the system does feel rigged. That's why I was impatient for the change in my department in particular that I had ownership of, including the Employment Rights Bill. It was faced with huge opposition, still is. You know, how am I having to argue in a modern economy? That treating people on zero hour contracts where they don't know from one minute to the next if they're going to have the hours to provide for their kids. And that's having a knock on effect on your generation that are saying, well, actually, can I have a kid? Because I don't know if I'm going to have the income to to provide for it.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  I think that's a legitimate thing for a politician to intervene and say, actually, as a state, we think that there is a fairness. Of course, there'll always be seasonal workers and everything. But actually, the the balance at the moment is for the birds. It's hopeless for young people. So I make no apologies for saying that. I make no apologies for saying that it's a fleecehold system. It's a rigged system. People, you know, buying freeholders, no, nothing at all delivered for it. Up in it is kept people trapped in flats that they can't sell. Now, it's having an adverse effect on the housing market. It's a rip off. People can see it.

• 49:41Vicky Spratt?

  I've interviewed people who bought leasehold flats because that is your starter home, right? Like, that's what I bought. And they've not been able to have children because they can't sell the flat because the flats are so toxic. That is also impacting.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  And it's like remediation. They're all crying. Oh, I've got to pay for the what? We've got to remediate a building that we sold someone that's a pup. You wouldn't go Currys and buy a dishwasher that blows up and then say, well, actually, we're doing nothing about the fact that we sold you a dud dishwasher. Actually, I'll come and get a washing machine from you. You wouldn't go there again, would you? If you bought a faulty product from somebody, you wouldn't go back to them again and say, I'm actually going to buy the product again from the same people. And that is this rigged system at the moment. And I don't think those things are controversial to say like, actually, it's, it's, these are low. As I call it, these are low hanging political fruit, right? Because it's so obviously wrong and we should be able to so obviously fix it.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  And if we're not doing that, then what are we for? We look like part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

• 50:40Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, can I just press down a bit on this social media stuff? Because I don't understand why the government isn't just doing it in relation to the, you know, stopping social media till you're 16. One of our great heroes on the rest of politics is the South Australian Premier Peter Maloskas, who's the first one to do it. He did it in South Australia, it's now across Australia, it's spreading around the world. I think the country's kind of decided on this. And yet we've just got this bloody seemingly never ending process going on.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think again, that just makes people feel that just make a decision and do it like that, that sense of, as I saw, as I say, the low hanging political fruit. Why can you not just make a decision there when it seems so clear that that's what you need to do? This active state, which I talked about, is exactly what we need to be.

• 51:31Alastair Campbell?

  Three quarters of the people we surveyed or that responded want it done.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  You know, the wild west of. Social media where everyone gets to see things that are absolutely abhorrent and Trump seen, you know, the way in which the internet works, it's not, it's not real life almost. And therefore people behave in a way that if you were in a, in a conversation like this, you just wouldn't behave in that way. But it's, it's, it reminds me of football. You go into football and then you become like, oh, I'm a massive and then you're swearing and you're saying the most out of me. My lads are county fans, right? They don't like Wrexham. I reckon that there's some choice words that my lads say if there are a match between Wrexham and County or other teams. Which county? Stockport County. Okay. So my lads are massive Stockport County fans. Newport from Wales.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, they're Stockport County fans and they have been dire supporters. But you know what I mean? If you're a football fan, you go in through the turnstiles and you behave in a way, Alistair, that when you're not at that football match, you would not behave like that. You would not use that language in that way. And I think the internet at the moment is just like the Wild West.

• 52:35Vicky Spratt?

  But that's not an excuse for people sending you death threats.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  It's not an excuse for that. But what I'm saying is the protections for people need to be there. We need to obviously look at how we protect young people. But I think there is also a wider conversation about how, how the internet, how the internet is a place that is basically anything goes.

• 52:55Vicky Spratt?

  I think we're going to look back on it like smoking. And the fact that so many thousands of 14 to 29 year olds wrote into us to say that they don't think social media is necessarily a good thing, you know, that they think it makes them more isolated. 80% said that. That tells you something about this generation that have grown up on it. They're not, they're not the guinea pig generation like my lot millennials were. They're saying, wait a minute, Aisha, I don't think this is good. So we've got Aisha, who's 17, who you'd expect to be pro TikTok, Instagram, social media generation. But what she had to say, I thought was on the money.

• 53:34Speaker 12

  Hi, I'm Aisha, I'm seventeen, and I feel like social media has influenced me to not have much trust in politics, particularly because of the way that politicians use social media to try and engage with Gen Z. Soundbite politics, silly memes that aren't really that funny on political parties. TikTok and Instagram pages feels very much targeted at us, but not hearing any of our policy concerns and feeling like that is all we care about, which is very infantilising and very ridiculous.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, she just described what my Jimmy says. So as I said earlier, you know, my Jimmy says the exact same. He's nearly seventeen, he's seventeen next month. A- around that, and and I think there's something in that. But certainly as they've got older, I see the way in which they use social media is completely changed and they know it's quite to- they know it's to- not just because obviously I'm their mum, but they know it's a toxic place, so they ge- generally tend to use it in the way they want. And what worries me is, with it being a toxic place as well, is that you get validation that you're not okay. So if you're a young person whose wellbeing is, you know, you're you're you're fe- because as teenagers, right, we all feel like I didn't want to be tall, I didn't want to be a certain way, I didn't feel right, and, you know, and and then if you're looking for

• 55:00Speaker 00

  invalidation or validation, you can you can find the invalidation very, very quickly. And and I I worry about those things, and I think that's why we need to put more safeguards in place. And I think the younger generation are really cottoning on to that.

• 55:13Vicky Spratt?

  I think the thing that's really come out through doing this, right, is Gen Z are talking to us, and particularly the the rest is politics Gen Z audience have really spoken to us. They've said they're not happy, they've said what they want. And hearing you both talk today, I think everybody gets it. But somehow we're missing how we actually say to them, we've got you, it's gonna be okay, we see you, we're listening, it's gonna get sorted out. And in the meanwhile, the vacuum is being filled by

• 55:44Alastair Campbell?

  Populist charlatans.

• 55:45Vicky Spratt?

  Populist politicians on the left and the right. And that is going to change our politics. We've heard about young men.

• 55:55Vicky Spratt?

  Going towards reform, some of that data was maybe a bit exaggerated, but there was definitely a swing. We've heard more and more, we're hearing about young women going to the Greens. And it is going to change, in the same way that all the issues we've discussed have already changed our society, fallen birth rates, more people living at home, huge amounts of student debt that most of them are never going to pay off. It is now fundamentally changing our politics. We don't have two-party politics anymore.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  But that's why we've got to show we're on their side and you've got to show that passion for it and you've got to make those changes and you've got to make the argument. The art of debate has to be there and we're all part of it. Are we part of the problem or part of the solution? Are we going to continue to allow this spiral of decline? Are we going to continue with a media that doesn't appreciate the issues that are affecting the next generation? Are we going to accept politicians that, you know, you can't scratch beneath the surface? You're trying. You said you met Zack Polanski and you asked him the questions around the economy and there was nothing beneath the surface and fraud is the same. You know, we've got to, we've got to drive that change forward. We're custodians for a period of time of our

• 57:04Speaker 00

  positions that we hold and the honour and the privilege of doing it. So therefore, we've got to be that, we've got to exemplify that in what we do as well and giving hope to that generation and saying, I'm fighting for you. And, you know, when I do speak to that generation, the one thing that they've always said about me is that I'm authentic and they get that I'm fighting. They like that passion, they like that from us. And instead of sanitizing that, we need to go out there and deliver and make sure that people can see that.

• 57:36Alastair Campbell?

  I think it'd also be a lot of good if you actually listened to what younger people are saying about Brexit. It's bloody clear what they're saying to me and we're not really moving on that.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And scratch beneath it, Alistair, because I agree that in particular, people will say Brexit was a mistake. And, you know, I was saying at the time, let's have a debate. I was on Question Time, me and Ken Livingston. And it was just after the Brexit had happened, but we hadn't triggered the process. And when we were saying, Ken Livingston was making a very reasonable point about when you trigger, because you need to sort out the arrest warrants and things like that. We literally got shouted down. It was an audience in Hartlepool saying, if you don't like it. And I defended Ken Livingston, saying, well, he's actually right. We should actually discuss what this actually means. And we got shouted down by a load of people in the audience, saying, you're just trying to frustrate Brexit. And it's like, no, no, we're just actually pragmatically going through what that means.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  And this is the same now, Alistair, because you can't go back. What you can do is say, what are the practical steps now that will, is this a benefit for the UK? Can we discuss it? What are the pros and cons and make a decision on that? And scratch beneath the, not you were this way then, and of course you're going to say that. They were that way then, of course they're going to say, actually have a discussion about, well, what does it mean? Can we go back into the European Union and what terms would we be going back on into the European Union? What does that mean for other trade deals? What does that mean for our standing globally? What does that mean for our defence? I think these are genuine journalistic questions that we should be holding people to account. They are political questions, but they're questions that we should be holding people to account.

• 59:09Alastair Campbell?

  The political debate is slowly coming into view, but it's been so slow.

• 59:13Vicky Spratt?

  We are looking at a generation that are coming of age with the economic settlement that this country has after 2008 and everything that that meant for our economy and after Brexit. And now they're looking around and saying, what's going to be done for us? Who's going to help us? So I think let's hear from one more of them and hear what they have to say.

• 59:34Speaker 13

  Hi, my name is Afzal and I'm a 21-year-old graduate from a working-class background. The university was sold to me as a golden ticket for socio-economic mobility. It would allow me to enter well-paid employment, own my own home and have a higher standard of living for me and my future family. However, since graduating from UCL with a law degree, I have found that promise to be untrue. I've applied to around thirty or forty different roles in the legal and policy sector, and I've received either automated responses or none at all. These applications take hours to complete and they include aptitude tests and around three to four questions averaging a thousand words in total. But it isn't just me. Around a million graduates are on state benefits and applying for jobs to hear no response has become exhausting for us. I also found myself in seventy thousand pounds of student debt that will accrue at a six percent interest rate.

• 1:00:17Speaker 13

  Extortion at rental prices mean that I will likely have to stay at home for the foreseeable future, and massively inflated house prices have pushed home ownership out of the picture. For my wealthier peers, however, the story isn't the same. They have parents able to pay for their education fees and eventually help them onto the housing ladder. I and millions of others have done everything as we should have done. And yet, we have gotten nowhere and it seems as though we were conditioned to enter a system which has delivered no benefit to us, but has given us a debt that we will likely be paying for our entire working life.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  Exactly. It sums up the inequality that you talked about, Alice, before, and that is acute. It also sums up the rigged system. That's why I was unapologetic about us creating the industries of the future. Because the investment that the state is putting in, huge sums of investment, which the Chancellor was criticised for, for putting that investment, and I think it's the right thing to do because that's how you drive investment into the industries of the future. So those jobs are created because those jobs are just not there for the graduates. And they feel that that system's going to get worse with AI. We've got to have an active state on how we redistribute because that's going to have a challenge for us. How do we adapt the workplace? How do we give people that sense of security, that there is a safety net?

• 1:01:31Speaker 13

  What more can we do now on student loans? Or do you think we're stuck with it?

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Well, student loans, again, I think that, you know, the challenge really is the way in which it's scored. And this was because when I was Shadow Education Secretary, this was really frustrating for me because a lot of things, if they don't belong to the government, even though it is the government, but your arm's length it, it goes off the score chart, right? But actually, in reality, a lot of it is never going to be repaid or over a period of time, it doesn't. Exist. So the way in which the accountancy and treasury scores it makes it really difficult at the moment for us to make big changes. But we have to do something at the moment, especially for those who do need maintenance allowance, maintenance grants, which I know that's something that we've been working on.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  But there are, there are challenges that we need to A, be honest about, the pragmatism of the reality and then fix it. Because at the moment, the psychology is that people are being really disadvantaged and it's having a perverse impact on their ability to, to go forward. Or even to choose to go to university. Most kids now are competing for the top level apprenticeships. They're avoiding university. So the kids that never used to go to university, they're now competing with what would have been university kids. Cause they're saying, actually, don't go to university, get yourself an apprenticeship. Cause you'll start earning money straight away. You'll get yourself a good job in a good industry and then you can fly. So they're choosing not, and that's having an impact on our worldwide, world renowned universities.

• 1:03:01Vicky Spratt?

  That's going to help in years to come, but what about, I mean, it's millions of people on plan two loans, right? They've capped the interest at six percent, but if you're paying nine percent of what you earn above twenty five K, twenty nine K, depending which plan you're on. That is a lot of money and you're still, six percent interest is still a lot. And I tell you what doesn't get talked about. And I, I experienced this myself. I paid off my student loan a couple of years ago. I went when fees were much lower, so I've been lucky enough to do that. Every time I applied to remortgage my house, my flat, they asked me what my student loan was. We were told we would never be asked.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, and it's having an impact now even to this day.

• 1:03:39Alastair Campbell?

  And the other thing is that on the plan two, kids from poorer families end up having to pay a lot more because you do.

• 1:03:45Speaker 00

  And those that came up with the system have said that the plan two was never as it was envisaged. So it's starting to have a real impact. So I do think it's a conversation that we need to have and we need to actively. But it's part of a wider conversation, I think as well, about how we create opportunities for jobs and how we protect and have a safety net. Cause I think the world of work is changing dramatically. So we need people to look at lifelong education. We need it to be, you know, an advancement for people that you could see tertiary education or apprenticeships as as valuable as higher education. But that higher education has got a value to it as well. And therefore that, that is a real sort of rewiring. About how we see education, which is what I tried to do, we'll plug again, when I was

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Shadow Education Secretary with the National Education Service. And I think that we do need to look at cradle to grave, an education system that delivers for people, that encourages people to see education as a positive, that is not going to saddle them with a huge amount of debt, and that is going to deliver for the changing nature of work that we're going to have in the UK. And that will help our economy going forward as well. Otherwise, we're going to be choking off again the challenges we face because we're seeing that businesses will say, it's not my P and O, get rid of all these workers, they're all then put on to the state, it's the state's problem. We see mass redundancies in areas where world of work is changing, and yet we're not seeing the, the ability to be agile enough to, to, to deliver for those people.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  You know, we're talking about net zero, we're talking about the change to move to renewables, it's the right thing to do. But there's a lot of concern around people who are in the oil industry saying, well, where's my job going to be and where's the transition? And that is going to happen, at the moment we're talking about it in particular industries, but that's going to happen by a whole swathes of the economy. And therefore, we need an active state that looks at lifelong learning. And I believe that's part of the wider conversation that we need to be having.

• 1:05:43Vicky Spratt?

  In my day job, I travel around this country interviewing people from all walks of life, more and more I'm meeting people in their thirties and their twenties who do not have the lives they thought they would have, right? That is what people say to me over and over and over again. I never thought my life would look like this. I thought I'd have kids, I didn't think I'd be living at home, I knew I'd be in debt, I thought I'd be able to repay it. And we've heard from your audience as well, there's this phrase that's kept coming up, missold, I was missold, I was missold of future, I was missold of student loan. And we don't have time to get into it, but I really do think there is a bit of a case of misselling with student loans. If a bank kept changing the interest on your credit card or your loan, you know, like, people, people would, would be making claims.

• 1:06:27Vicky Spratt?

  And if that happened with your mortgage and you weren't on a variable rate, you'd be able to make a claim. It's, it's not allowed, but it has happened with, with student loans. I do think, I do think we're in a bit of a crisis.

• 1:06:37Alastair Campbell?

  What I don't understand is why, when you've delivered on giving them the vote. There hasn't been alongside it, an education strategy and also here's a whole stack of policy aimed at you.

• 1:06:50Vicky Spratt?

  Well, in fairness, I, I think.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  But we have got a stack of policy, we're just not packaging it.

• 1:06:54Vicky Spratt?

  But it's not being sold, right? I, I think the rent, renters rights, I think leasehold, employment rights and obviously employers have, have got their criticisms of it. And some of that is true, especially combined with the national insurance contribution.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, which I've raised all the costs, you know, we said we'd do the business rates review, the national insurance contributions, you know, energy costs have gone up. We said that energy costs wouldn't go up. We've had the war in Ukraine. We've now got the, the war in Iran, which has all had a knock on effect. They're not interested in excuses. All they see is that it's made it even more difficult. But out of all of them, I'm going to defend the employment rights act and put in money in working people's pockets and increasing the minimum wage. Cause we don't want them to feel like there's no hope for them to be able to get out of the challenges. And you're right, we have done the things that do affect and will affect the Gen Z generation and will make the country better off. And we need to be talking about those things and we need to be proud of those things and we need to go out there and fight for them.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  Because if you're fighting for them, then you're showing the people that are in that circumstance at the moment, that you're fighting for them and that there is opportunity for them. And I think that that is what's missing. And part of the reason that that's missing is it's so much easier for mainstream media and for us to just make it all about personalities or make it all about like a 30 second clip.

• 1:08:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, thank you for coming. I think you're now our second guest who's been on twice.

• 1:08:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Alastair Campbell?

  Cause you came on before. I think Mark, Mark Carney's the only one who's been on twice, I think.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  Well, I'm in good company if it's me and Mark Carney.

• 1:08:22Alastair Campbell?

  And he might be coming on for the third time quite soon.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, he didn't, he didn't pull his punches at the, you know, he's.

• 1:08:28Alastair Campbell?

  He's brilliant. Well, thank you.

• 1:08:30Vicky Spratt?

  Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:08:38Speaker 14

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