On the one hand, it’s a marvel to behold the indefatigable Vermont socialist getting the band back together for his barnstorming “Stop Oligarchy” tour — one that first drew sizable crowds in the Midwest and is now drawing tens of thousands on the second leg across the Mountain West, co-headlined with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Sanders has been decrying the evils of oligarchy for decades, and now, with Elon Musk all but co-presidenting with Trump, he looks like a prophet.

On the other hand, there is very little that Sanders (even with AOC by his side) can accomplish. The Democrats are the minority party and act afraid of their own shadow, while Sanders is a not-so-spry 83 years old and stooping more by the year. The experience of seeing Sanders rail against capitalism and the One Percent doesn’t quite hit like it did a decade ago, It’s akin to catching a Rolling Stones show in 2025 — it’s great to hear the timeless hits and all — but the thrills are fleeting. You ask yourself: Are you still Feeling the Bern, or is that just actual heartburn?

More from this author

Why Trump loves corrupt Democrats

By Ryan Zickgraf

That’s a legitimate question, because it isn’t just Bernie who is getting long in the tooth — so are his supporters and those currently raging against the Trump machine. A decade ago, I described the Sanders run as a “punk-rock presidential campaign,” a middle finger to the political establishment that was far and away most popular with bright-eyed but downwardly mobile college students and 20-somethings. That dynamic played out in the 2016 Democratic primary, in which Sanders thumped Hillary Clinton among under-30 voters, including 83% of young people in New Hampshire.

Not anymore. Today, those packing into high-school auditoriums to cheer Bernie or busy marching in the streets aren’t quite replicating Lollapalooza; it’s more like a particularly raucous school-board meeting. The same Millennials who helped make Left populism cool in the 2010s and marched for a racial reckoning five years ago are now slouching towards middle age. Meanwhile, white-haired dissidents at Tesla protests in 2025 outnumber those too young to rent a car. It’s a changing of the guard — but, ironically, back to the old guard.

The youth have been missing for so long, it’s a wonder that progressives don’t print their faces on milk cartons. College campuses have been quiet, noted Inside Higher Ed, even among institutions where activism is practically an intramural sport. “I haven’t seen a whole lot, which is kind of uncharacteristic of our campus”, observed a student at American University in Washington, DC.

In online forums, political organizers are also making noise about the missing youth. “The last two Tesla protests I went to — the majority were elderly, and I appreciate their support, but why no young people?”, reads a viral post in the subreddit for the 50501 movement, the online group coordinating the anti-Trump capital city protests and others. “If at age 30, I’m the youngest showing up, there’s a problem”. Another post suggested that there were more elderly Trump voters opposing the president’s overreach than young liberals.

It’s no coincidence, then, that the most significant impact made by the Resistance thus far has been a consumer boycott by older Democrats refusing to buy Teslas — it’s not as if many 20-year-old baristas and other members of the precariat are the ones withholding their Cybertruck purchases. Otherwise, with young people gone, the Big Dad Energy at 2025 rallies isn’t enough to make a major impact. The size of the Sanders rallies are impressive, but other protests have largely been a fraction of the size they were during Trump’s first term.

Where did the kids go? The best answer is that most of them didn’t vote at all. The peak of the hyperpolitics era is behind us, and election turnout in November trended downward for young adults. They’re growing more disillusioned with all institutions — the courts, the media, and politicians — no matter which party they’re affiliated with. A new analysis of Gallup data found that less than a third of under-30s trust the government, a new low. In my reporting, I have spoken to many young people who view all politics as toxic, a form of entertainment that didn’t change the world, but ruined a lot of personal relationships. Why doom-march in public when you can doomscroll from the comfort of your home or, better yet, soothe your crippling anxiety with ASMR videos. 

When the youth did vote, they leaned Republican. According to data whiz kid David Shor, Trump won a majority of those under the age of 26 except women of color — a massive change from both 2016 and 2020. They voted for a political revolution over the status quo but from the right, much like the children of Sixties hippies who became Reaganite yuppies. As it turns out, Gen-Z loves Eighties nostalgia of all kinds, whether it’s bubblegum synth-pop, Stranger Things, or the market-friendly politics of Michael J. Fox’s Alex Keaton character from the sitcom Family Ties. 

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Can ‘abundance liberalism’ save the Dems?

By Sohale Mortazaci

But there has been a reluctance to demonstrate even among young Leftists. Some of that is undoubtedly a result of the chilling effect of the campus crackdowns on those protesting America’s role in the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration’s disturbing persecution of demonstrators accused of “un-American activity”, such as Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian student activist student detained by ICE and facing a revocation of his green card.  

Yet there has also been an ideological drift among activists who now reject the Sanders coalition as sellouts who supported “Genocide Joe”. Many under-30s Leftists are delusional anarchists who barely mention Medicare for All, minimum-wage hikes, or the universal programs popular in Bernie World. They view Gaza as the Mother of All Causes, the most important battleground in the intifada against Western “colonizers”. All other causes are somehow related, from trans justice to Long COVID to fat shaming. Are you autistic? “Learn how police abolition and neurodivergence advocacy are connected”, reads a flyer from a recent Stop Cop City event. No wonder most normies aren’t grabbing their keffiyehs and joining up.

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The Left won’t let go of woke

By Catherine Liu

But if there’s someone that can relate to dropping out of politics — it’s Democrats writ large. Outside of Sanders and a handful of others, party leaders have been MIA during the first wave of the Trump administration’s decimation of the federal government, perhaps to some undisclosed White Lotus hotel to mourn the false promise that they could slowly coast to permanent victory against conservatives by simply letting them die off. Since the George W. Bush years, liberals clung to the arguments made by John Judis and Roy Teixeira in their polemic The Emerging Democratic Majority, that America’s changing demographics — more college-educated professionals and young single women and minorities — would lead to Dem dominance.

Judis and Teixeira have now recanted — and so should the Democrats. They will have to figure out how not to be a party everyone hates more than the horrid Millie Bobbie Brown robot movie. If the Democrats want to get there — and, let’s be honest, no one’s quite sure where “there” even is anymore — then short of sending Bernie Sanders through a time machine to a decade when his brand of righteous fury felt less like a nostalgia act, they may have to craft an appealing majoritarian agenda and a credible leader this side of a nursing home to champion it.

With that in mind, we’ve asked a number of commentators and contributors to suggests what the party could do to reverse the problem.

Guaranteed home ownership
Peter Franklin, Associated Editor, UnHerd 
@Peterfranklin_

Housing isn’t the only reason for the great generational divide in politics, but it is a huge one, and something the Government can do something about. When your most vivid experience of capitalism is paying half or more of your salary to a private landlord every month, Corbynism doesn’t seem so bad.

The Conservative manifesto should have offered hope for change, but didn’t, but is there anything the Conservatives could offer that Labour couldn’t outflank by promising to spend another zillion pounds on it? Yes. Labour wants us to be tenants of the state — the last thing that socialists want is a surge of home ownership among younger voters. So Conservatives should guarantee an affordable home for every 25 to 50 year old with a record of regular employment.

But how? “Just build more houses” won’t work. The big developers have easily enough planning permissions to build all the houses they want — i.e. not enough to threaten their profits on land speculation. It’s time to break their oligopoly.

Communities should be empowered to purchase land at agricultural-use values and systematically prepare the sites for development. Each plot could be secured without having to fund a lottery win for some lucky landowner; builders would compete on the basis of efficiency and quality, not privileged influence over the planning system, thus bringing down construction costs as well as land costs. Therefore, homes could be offered at a price well below market levels.

Needless to say, private landlords, second homeowners and all absentee property investors would be excluded; meanwhile, local people and first-time buyers would be given priority. The catch for purchasers is that the terms on which they bought their homes would also apply when re-selling them. So, no windfall profits for them either.

Is this capitalism? Perhaps not, but it isn’t socialism either. Rather, it’s a vision for an inclusive, property-owning democracy, and the Conservatives should embrace it — before it’s too late.

Become the women’s party again
Zoe Strimpel, historian and writer

Between the authoritarian narcissism of the new Left and the shrill nastiness of the alt-Right there is a large hole in the market for a decent, principled Tory party. But winning over the young will require more than lame slogans; it will mean reinstating classical liberalism where it belongs at the heart of the Conservative Party. Here are some ways it can honour these — and seduce the young:

Firstly, it should show proper engagement with gender issues, and particularly women’s health. The Tory Party is, contrary to its reputation, the party of women — from the enormously influential mixed-gender Primrose League in 1885 to its two lady PMs, both of whom respected abortion rights.

It should take bold stances on women’s reproductive health and freedom. This means affirming commitment to the abortion time limit at 24 weeks, making it easier to have an abortion by funding more clinics (current wait-times can be traumatic); radically cutting the price of the morning-after pill to £5 (it’s currently £15-£35), and injecting cash into rape crisis centres. Rape crisis provision rose by 9% in 2018 (under Tory governance), but 6,000 victims, including 172 children, were still on waiting lists for help by the end of March this year. Young people, with #MeToo on their mind, care deeply about this.

An entrepreneurial and rich society is not hamstrung by helping the destitute — it’s strengthened by doing so. The Tories should demonstrate seriousness about helping those most in need by injecting mega-cash into tackling homelessness; it’s not just London Lefties who see the tragic increase in people living on the streets and think the Tories will make it even worse. It does not have to be that way.

Classical liberals — aka the best Tories — understand the importance of free speech and freedom in artistic creation and have watched their erosion with horror. Instead of railing at the warriors of woke (epitomised by “millennial snowflakes”), the Tories need to come up with an audacious and positive commitment to free speech.

They should establish a body that oversees the funding of a protected space for arts and institutional life that is completely free of the constraints of PC police. The free speech body should also closely monitor infringements. Thanks to schemes such as “decolonise the curriculum”, inclusion policies and safe space marshalling, universities are particularly stuffed with those who infringe free speech rights — of students, fellow staff and visitors — and those who do so should feel the consequences.

Finally, the Tories should commit to simple, effective schemes that encourage and reward commercial inventiveness and ambition, through a mixture of well-publicised tax breaks, prestigious training schemes and awards.

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Don’t make the young pay for the old
Mary Harrington, UnHerd columnist
@moveincircles

The Tories should stop treating young people like idiots and tackle some issues head on: the ageing population, the housing crisis, the funding gap in health and social care, and the state of the public finances.

A bold approach would be a “social solidarity bonus”, based on a presumption that if the next generation wishes to inherit a nest egg from granny’s property and assets after she dies, then they cannot simply expect the state to stump up the cost of caring for her as she gets older and frailer.

I am talking, of course, about the “dementia tax”, the much-reviled attempt in Theresa May’s 2017 manifesto to grasp the nettle of the growing adult social care funding gap, by proposing that the value of a pensioner’s home should be included in an assessment of their assets when providing home-based care. At present this is only the case when someone moves into residential care.

To be an authentically conservative policy, the presumption behind the social solidarity bonus should be that families are both able and willing to put effort into caring for one another, rather than relying on the state. And further, that if they do so they should be free to inherit from the older generation without the Exchequer helping itself too liberally to the legacy.

The “dementia tax” should be seen as a last resort: a levy on those who will not meet their obligations. Why should the middle-aged pocket the sale value of granny’s house after she dies while allowing the state to bear the cost of caring for her up to that point?

To support the social solidarity bonus, new incentives could encourage families to upsize to a property large enough to have room for granny — perhaps a relaxation of the tax rules around gifts and inheritance tax, or even grants towards moving house, or stamp duty relief on house sales and purchases. In exchange, families would have to be willing to shoulder more of the obligations of social care.

The move toward multigenerational households would free up the housing market and create opportunities for multi-family households to share costs, resources and communal life — even childcare — freeing up smaller properties and providing a leg up to young people struggling to meet the cost of living and save enough to get onto the housing ladder themselves. It would also help to address the widespread problem of loneliness among the elderly, as it became more commonplace for older people to live in households that also contained children.

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Who gains from the great university scam?

By Mary Harrington

Rescue our towns
Sebastian Giraud, UnHerd contributor and politico
@sebastiangiraud

Go to almost any middle-sized town the length and breadth of the country and the same scene will greet you: dilapidated bus shelters, abandoned paint-flicked shops, a broken window or two and the obligatory betting shop. Regardless how hard small shopkeepers sweat away, making their corner as enticing as possible to those passers-by, they know as well as anyone that they’re up against the app that delivers tomorrow, or the “experience” of a trip to the nearest city centre where everything is manicured, perfumed and glossed to perfection.

What sort of message does it give those young people as they start thinking about what life has in store, that capitalism, the council, those big companies or whoever has hollowed out the heart of their community? That there are more shops that used to be something, and that the only places that seem worth popping into are those that will take your money in exchange for a pint or a betting slip?

No government of any hue have adequately tried to prioritise or grapple with this issue of dilapidated high streets. It is one that urgently needs addressing to prevent the tide of talent scurrying off to large cities, preserve local culture and identity and give every community and the young people that live there a sense of hope and possibility.

This is a natural issue that speaks to the core of Conservative values and an issue the Tories have a real chance to grasp and tackle, and so win the respect of a whole new generation of voter. What is more enterprising than providing bursaries for a young person with an idea to stay within their community to start their business, or providing an incentive for entrepreneurs to take a shop that needs some extra work, rather than the fancier one down the road?

Rather than give unquestioned tax relief for the landlords of empty premises sat waiting for the tides to change, it should be conditional on their shopfronts being presentable and useful to the community: who knows, it may even encourage someone to rent it, or even better, choose to turn it back into a home.

Bring down the barriers
Rakib Ehsan, Research fellow on radicalisation and integration
@rakibehsan

As a millennial, anti-racist trade unionist who could never vote for the current Labour Party but will not opt for the Conservatives this time either, I would suggest a number of steps the Tories could take in increasing their appeal to younger sections of the British electorate.

For all the love I have for my country, I am firmly of the view that the British promise of meritocracy and equality of opportunity is nothing but a distant dream. The UK labour market continues to be plagued by racial and ethnic penalties, and a recent study by the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College found that British blacks and South Asians continued to face labour market discrimination at levels unchanged since the late 1960s.

Fighting this should not be seen as caving into leftist identity politics — it should be seen as a vital pursuit in the name of ensuring a more meritocratic allocation of rewards and opportunities in British society. The Tories should also be more honest over the implications of cuts made to legal aid, and the broader tightening of access to employment tribunals.

A British Conservative Party which seeks to rebalance labour-market relations more in favour of the worker, and is relentless in its pursuit of equality of opportunity, could make some headway with younger voters. It must acknowledge that barriers to upward mobility based on social class continue to persist — and thinking so does not make one a grievance-filled Marxist.

The Conservative Party must show that it is serious about providing a fair and meritocratic system which enables young people to maximise their potential. A party which will invest in technical colleges, as well as offering maintenance grants for talented students from deprived backgrounds. Along with ensuring that public services are well-funded, it must also better support the training of future domestic medical staff and social carers.

Help students get out of debt
Danielle Boxall, UnHerd AudioVisual Producer
@DanniBoxall

Labour captured the student vote in 2017 with its free tuition policy, and promise to wipe all student debt, while the Lib Dems, once the party of students, have never recovered from the coalition’s raising of fees and Nick Clegg’s “Sorry” video (and its subsequent parodies).

Since fees were raised in 2012, graduates in work have been paying the price for their degree with a loan of around £50,000. And that loan is increasing, at a top rate of 6.3% this year, all because the loan now bases inflation against the outdated RPI, making it more expensive than a mortgage — but good luck getting one of those!

It is a completely un-Conservative policy. The debt is building up faster than students can pay it back, and interest is even piled on during the years of study, when students have no means of paying back. Over the years it accrues, and working graduates pay back hundreds of thousands in their lifetime, disincentivising the ambitious young people the party should be aiming to attract. Only the top 17% of earners clear the debt before the 30-year cut off, meaning taxpayers bear the cost of 47% of it. So much for the party of low tax.

In their manifesto, the Tories said they would “look at the interest rates on loan repayments with a view to reducing the burden of debt”. With mass spending already committed to, why won’t the party go one further and finally move over to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and save graduates up to £16,000 in debt?

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Tackle the Gig Economy
James Billot, UnHerd trainee
@james_billot

A Conservative Government could work to restore its business-friendly credentials by focusing minds on the UK’s rapidly expanding gig economy. Around two-thirds of the country’s 4.7 million gig workers are aged 16-34, making it an attractive sector for the Tories to make inroads.

They should start by enacting the The Good Work Plan. So far, the government has been sluggish in implementing some of its proposals and even watered down parts of it. In other areas, the Plan does not go far enough. For instance, the right for workers to request predictable hours after 26 weeks of service can, as the TUC notes, be swatted away by their employer. The Tories should introduce a right, not merely a request, for workers at large companies to have predictable hours after the same time period.

So far, so Labour. But where the Tories can distinguish themselves is in creating the conditions for small business to thrive in the gig economy. This is not a dog whistle for banning Uber or Deliveroo, but more needs to be done to tackle platform monopolies that dominate certain industries in this sector. By exploiting network effects, these large companies stifle competition through aggressive price cutting and prevent new entrants from entering the market.

The Tories should use Brexit to update and modernise the 1998 Competition Act, which would prevent excessive concentration in the shared economy and allow smaller companies to challenge the big beasts.

Like it or not, the gig economy has been woven into the fabric of modern working life. As it expands, the Tories cannot afford to be sluggish in dealing with its adverse effects (endless “consultations” won’t cut it) while harnessing its potential. Strategically, it makes sense too: young, urban voters are hardly a demographic that the Tories over-perform in.

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By James Bloodworth

Save the cost of tuition fees
Ben Sixsmith, writer
@BDSixsmith

You can explain to young people that more and more students entering higher education means that it will be more and more expensive. You can explain to them that people who struggled to find good careers after entering the workforce had no immediate obligation to clear their debts. It will make no difference. The plain truth is that, however reasonable a Conservative might have thought it was to raise fees, young people saw and will always see the demand to pay for their tuition as a demand to pay for something that others had for free.

Fortunately, there is a response: you don’t have to pay it, you don’t even have to go to university! The preposterous inflation of the university system, egged on by a gurning Tony Blair, encouraged the rise of credentialism and, thus, an artificial need for a degree which might have been acquired by means which had little to no inherent worth in terms of education and personal development.

Let’s cut our higher education system down to size. People can save time and money, and will not be forced to wallow in student grievances and fears for their adulthood. Give them work experience! Give them work! Hell, give them a few grand and a gap year. Universities are an essential asset for civilisations, but so is the Armed Forces and we don’t demand that everyone join that.