Why 17-year-olds like me are in despair at this election

From the depressing uphill battle that was “getting Brexit done” to the recent ridiculous lack of self-awareness in the D-Day scandal, in my limited experience of politics, I have often found the entire performance down in Westminster to be, in the politest of terms, a bit of an omnishambles.

But I am not writing about the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster – I am writing about Scotland. For context, I recently attended a political hustings in Aberdeen, where my general takeaway from the event was that most of what was said was mundane at best and very underprepared at worst. I wanted to pose a question of the candidates, but we ran out of time before I got the chance. However, on the recommendation of my father, I decided ask my question in this article in the hope that I will get some sort of response.

A life under two governments

My question is this:

I am a 17-year-old pupil from the North-East of Scotland, with my final year of secondary school before me. I want to go into journalism, specifically political journalism at university and my future should be nothing but excitement for the years ahead. But, due to the state of my country, that is not the case.

I have spent the majority of my life under a Tory government and the entirety of my life, bar a few months, under the SNP in the Scottish Parliament. I was too young to remember the previous Labour government and the Lib-Lab coalition, so the current politics of the UK is all I have ever known. And what I have known, from both sides of the Border, is a sneering, contemptible, immature pantomime masquerading as a government, with a culture comparable to a Victorian Boys Club, and politicians so vile and morally bankrupt it makes the characters from ‘The Thick of It’ look like Blue Peter presenters.

I suppose each generation grows up with a slight aversion to politicians, a typical rebellion against traditionalists, but I don’t think it’s normal for a teenager to wake up in the morning and ask their parents if the Chancellor has resigned. (Truly, one of the most common things I heard in my early teens was the infamous “Could this be the end of Boris Johnson?”)

Sunak plays soldiers

I can't really speak for older generations, and my opinion will not really count in the grand scheme of things, but I find it so hard to believe, the young whippersnapper that I am, that politics always used to be so shallow. Wasn’t there a time long ago when policies and manifestos were made to help improve the country instead of political point-scoring?

I mean, National Service, really? As a representative of the dreaded Gen Z, the generation of layabouts the Tories are pledging to whip into shape should they win the election, I can safely say I would rather spend my weekends the old-fashioned way by, you know, working a weekend job to make actual money in the current cost-of-living crisis! Sorry, I’m not running about promoting a “shared sense of purpose” for 12 months, just so Rishi Sunak can play at being the model of a modern major general. As my parents would say, if today's politicians are the answer, people are asking the wrong question.

I am still too young to vote in the coming general election, but it is very much my future and the future of my peers that is being decided. It’s a foregone conclusion that by Friday morning, Rishi Sunak will not be Prime Minister, and whatever the overall result of the election is, soon enough politicians will be making decisions on how to run the country. And, in truth, I feel I will be let down by them.

Same script on repeat

I know as a nation we collectively joke that the country is forever on a downward spiral, but I am proud to be Scottish and it depresses me to see my country in such a state. I have witnessed Scotland be disregarded, ignored and devalued by politicians. This was especially clear when Liz Truss branded Nicola Sturgeon, the then First Minister and democratically elected leader of my country, as an “attention seeker” who was best to be “ignored” during the leadership contest.

My friends and I are fed up with hearing the same spin and soundbites from politicians; the same slogans and electorate-winning replies; the same script being read on repeat like a broken tape recorder; the same promises that, under their party, “things can only get better”.

But now, as I stare down the next five years, where my chances of owning my own home are becoming slimmer and slimmer, where the streets I walk home from school are becoming less and less safe for girls like myself, where the borderline Orwellian politicians are still scheming and spinning and smiling about how everything is going to be fine, I truly want to believe that things are going to get better. But I just find it difficult.

So, to whoever reads this, from backbencher to Cabinet members, from party candidate to party grandee, my question to you is: as one of the next generations of voters anxiously watching from the sidelines, what can you say to win our trust and prove that the social and economic situation in Scotland, due to the actions of your party, is actually, finally, going to get better?

Olivia Skye Gray is a secondary school pupil from Aberdeen