Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Strange young things

Young activists fight like vipers to get close to power . . . and it’s all a huge myth

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[/audioplayer]Whenever the curtain is pulled back on youthful political activism, the picture is ugly. Three years ago, in Young, Bright and On the Right, the BBC followed students at Oxbridge fighting like vipers to get ahead in their university Conservative clubs. Along with the inevitable three-piece suits, wildly invented accents and endless talk of what ‘the party’ expected, there was also that characteristic lack of awareness that ‘the party’, like the rest of the world, remained largely indifferent to them.

Now the suicide of a 21-year-old called Elliott Johnson has brought this world back before the public gaze. Every detail speaks of a scene which is unpleasant even before it is tragic. Anyone who has been involved in student politics or observed it from a distance will recognise the traits: the hysterical insistence on loyalty, the pettiness, double-dealing, levels of corruption to shame most third-world leaders and always, but always, the endless threats by everyone to sue everyone else.

As certain young activists and even advisers around the current Labour leadership demonstrate, the submersion of young lives (especially those of slight misfits) into the sense of ‘belonging’ that a party can provide is not an exclusively Conservative issue. Young Liberal Democrats may find it difficult to find a quorum these days, but young Labour activists continue to be more than capable of pouring their youthful envies and frustrations into the party.

Nevertheless there is something undeniably specific about the noxiousness of young Conservative politics. Perhaps because it is fuelled by people who think that House of Cards is a guide for getting ahead in business and politics. While young leftists tend to be propelled by envy, those on the right tend to be driven by greed, especially a greed for power and money, in that order.

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