Over the last week a revolution has taken place; a revolution whose ramifications will have a profound impact on the United Kingdom and its future. I have witnessed this revolution in my own home, but it will have been taking place in houses throughout Britain. It began at dawn last Friday when I – shocked, like so many others – broke the news of the Brexit vote to my youngest daughter, who is 14. “What!” she said, sitting bolt upright in her bed. “Mum, what’s going on? I don’t believe it.”
The same shock was registered an hour or so later by her 22-year-old sister, the only other one of my four girls who was in residence, followed swiftly by a text from daughter number three, aged 17, who was on a school trip to Rome. “Angry,” it said, “that the older generation has voted for something which is going to impact my generation more, and we didn’t even get a vote.”
Finally, I got this from my eldest, who recently finished a year studying in Florence, and is now working in Amsterdam. “Never felt so deeply disappointed with our country before,” she wrote, followed by a sad face emoji.
And sad we all are: but for my daughters this vote is about much more than sadness. What it is about is politicisation; that is the revolution I have been witnessing – the politicisation of Britain’s young people.
29 June 2016, The Tablet
For my children, politics has just been a background hum. Until now
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