The second annual UK Youth Poll, published by the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow and sponsored by Nationwide, surveyed 2,000 young people aged 16–29 on their attitudes across a range of current issues. Eddie Barnes, director of the John Smith Centre, said: “The idea that the next generation will have it better than previous ones has been a founding belief for decades. This poll shows that the majority of this generation of young people no longer believe it to be true. And it reveals their loss of belief is collapsing at speed… why fight for a country that isn’t fighting for you?” Key findings include:

• There has been a dramatic collapse in optimism: those expecting their lives to be better than their parents’ has halved in a single year, dropping from 63% to just 36%.
• Those expecting to be worse off more than doubled, from 13% to 38%.
• 50% say there are no circumstances under which they would take up arms for the UK. Only 38% said they would under some circumstances.
• 55% rank the impact of AI on jobs as a top three threat to their futures.
• Only 25% of young people feel they are being treated fairly by the political system. 56% agree that democracy in Britain is in trouble, and 53% say politics has become too divisive. However, the share who say they prefer dictatorship to democracy has fallen from 27% last year to 17%.

Young people’s top five issues facing the UK are: cost of living, housing affordability, healthcare, immigration and asylum, and jobs/job security.