In 1983, 42% of 18-24 year olds voted for Margaret Thatcher's Tories, and only 33% voted Labour. In 2017: 60% of those aged 18-24 voting for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party

I've definitely became a lot more engaged and interested since 2010 though, and it's just been constant heartbreaking disappointment since then unfortunately.

Great topic - thanks for starting it. : )

Hmm, well I have definitely changed over time. First I would like to say that changing your opinion / political stance is healthy, and people should not be ‘shamed’ or feel awkward having a different or contradictory opinion many years ago to the one they have now, the journey can be important and it makes sense to change or develop your view based upon new information- ultimately that’s how we progress. That is why I dislike so much of social media really but that’s a whole different topic altogether..

I would say that my journey has been pretty similar to Iz. Started out pretty politically unengaged but I guess would have described myself as socially very liberal but quite centre or centre right economically- essentially I was quite Lib Dem (hello Liz!) and voted for them when I first got the chance to vote but really didn't care that much about politics, until that is we had ‘I agree with Nick’ breaking the promise that they would scrap tuition fees… plus the GFC of 2008/2009 when I realised how much the whole entire system of capitalism was broken (crony capitalism rampant) and how this had worsened inequality in our society, this being accelerated further through the 2010s “lost decade”, and was something that the recent pandemic has shown a further light on IMO where we seem to value work inversely proportionally to its actual importance to society.

At the time (early 2010s) I had a friend at work who ended up having his weekly mental health support cut because of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition. I witnessed how much he was suffering as a result- ultimately he ended up unemployed, back living in a house share in Leeds and thoroughly depressed. I went up to watch the 2015 election result with him in the vague hope of getting Chaos with Ed Miliband, and distinctly remember his housemate shouting the F-word really loudly when the exit poll came in. That night was one of the most depressing of my life.

Straight after that election, I went to see Owen Jones in (‘The People’s Republic of’) Bury St Edmunds in May 2015 and started a full sub of Private Eye, both of which got me politically engaged and since then of course we had six years of chaos with .. er, well not Ed Miliband! I joined our union at work and started to engage with that, including become labelled as militant by engaging in strike action in February 2016 on equal pay. I lost a day of pay to travel to Westminster to march and then spend the afternoon in the HoC to lobby MPs. We did briefly get to speak to the MP for Exeter Ben Bradshaw who was excellent and got Jo Johnson (then head of BEIS) to take note of us.. a year later we won our strike action by getting the pay deal that allowed men and women meteorologists to be paid the same. I’ve also starting watching and supporting left media such as Novaramedia — basically Ash Sarkar has radicalised me! I’ve become much more economically left over time to the point, but only to where I feel like much of the public are now anyway, where I think nationalisation of rail, energy, water should be an immediate priority, especially as we need to rapidly decarbonise and head towards a more sustainable future and wealth should be much more heavily taxed.

What gives me hope is that talking to many of the younger generation coming through now at work (those born post 1996) they seem to be fairly politically engaged already and seemingly share a lot of the same political views, so at some point the demographics must become favourable for a more socially liberal and economically left government to be elected but just not right now sadly. After all, this whole 'you become more right wing with age' thing isn't really holding anymore, nor did it ever (see below).
So yeah, I’ve been on quite a political journey in the past 12 years - a different direction to our current PM tho.

I don’t know if I’m genuinely one of the only right leaning people on here or if, like me, most of the others are too scared to post about politics on here very often. But I’ve made the (not particularly unusual) journey from Lib Dem to libertarian conservative since I hit 30. Like dandy* I think life does tend to turn you from an idealist into a pragmatist, wherever that takes you.