The British are actively hostile towards young people - Suzanne Moore

Politicians worry about the youth vote, but the catastrophe is that we have disempowered a whole generation

'Politicians talk of the difficult "school-to-work" transition.' Photograph: UK Stock Images Ltd/Alamy

Being in favour of social mobility is rather like being in favour of world peace. And wanting to travel. It's a lovely dream in the beauty pageant of politics. But not everyone can move up in the world – as some would have to move down, surely. No one votes for downward mobility, for their children to be worse off than them, for all the motors of change to stall, do they? For things to only get worse?

Except that is exactly what has happened. Some generations are written off because of wars and we acknowledge that with days of remembrance. But there is now a political class contorted with anxiety that its appeal to under-25s is, at the very least, "limited". Yet it is ready to "penalise" them by imprisoning them to a life of debt, scraping by, never reaching their full potential and then being called lazy for it.

Nick Boles is concerned that Tories seem like aliens. If only. I imagine some aliens as attractive and having super powers. He is worried that people think they only represent the rich! How the idiot public got that into their heads is a mystery. The solution, Boles thinks, is banging on about the Tories' social liberalism (ie gay marriage) to appeal to the youth. Righto.

The prospect of a living wage, a chance to leave home before they are 35, a way to pay their student loans as well as their rent, not being told by jobcentres to deny they have a degree as this makes them over-qualified, may be policies to woo the youth, I reckon. But then I am not a thinktank.

It is shaming that we have 14% of 15-24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets). Education Maintenance Allowance, crucial for the poorest kids to travel to college is long gone. Further education, with its access courses, is being ground down while we are fed reconstituted nuggets of tripe about vocational training. Michael Gove's education revolution, the bizarre retro fantasy as yet unexplained to the teachers who will have to teach it, marches on.

But all over Europe the young have been made to pay for an economic crisis that was created before they were. Youth unemployment has gone viral and only Germany has really avoided this. Hope turns to fear even for those who did two jobs while getting a degree.

This is a catastrophe and yet this generation is not in power. Russell Brand appealed precisely because he voiced the "bleedin' obvious". Politicians, meanwhile, talk of the difficult "school-to-work transition", ignoring the lack of jobs, or the reality that nepotism and class connections are more embedded than ever.

What is striking is that any attempt to give young people autonomy is always rubbished. We didn't have a proper debate about lowering the age of consent because – pass the smelling salts – there is too much sex on the internet. Other countries manage to have both lower teen pregnancy rates and lower ages of consent, but the British are actively hostile towards young people.

At the age of 10 you can be held criminally responsible and at 16 you can basically sign up to join the army to get your legs blown off at 18. We are happy to lock young people up before they can vote. None of this is logical.

The economic reality means that if we remove benefits, young people are effectively infantilised and their parents have to be wealthy for them to be "independent". Culturally, the entire rhetoric is in deep denial so it's all about "going for it", "wanting it enough", "being hungry", as though landing a zero sum hours contract is winning The X Factor. The Tory narrative of replacing the "broken education system … to make this country at long last and for the first time, a land of opportunity for all" pans out as as cutting jobseeker's allowance and housing benefit. Cameron's delusional wittering slams the door in young faces while Labour dithers. They know welfare cuts are vote winners, but what about young voters? Turkeys and Christmas come to mind ...

It has long been obvious that masochistically, many have accepted austerity as a necessary discipline. But did this generation? No. It has mostly done as it was told while tested and assessed for ever, then dumped with massive fees. We had that blip: the riots a couple of years ago. Otherwise they have been characterised as overly sexualised, inherently stupid, hooked to crappy talent shows, computer games, screens, lacking in basic skills, lazy, rude and vain. And hyper-consumerist.

Except, of course, the ones whose opportunities were not just grasped but simply exist as the facts of their lives. The younger versions of the Clegg/Cameron/Miliband triumvirate … you see if only more more young people were born rich and well-connected, certain things really would be better. Meanwhile every measure that may empower kids from Sure Start to voting is disappearing.

Too bad that too many were born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remember this, though: a generation has been lost not accidentally, but economically. They have been placed on the bonfire of austerity, a necessary sacrifice, and as they burn, we warm our hands. And those on high warn us that children really should not play with fire.

Guardian