Translator: Hiroko Kawano Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Last June, the UK voted to leave the European Union.
Like many young people,
I was an avid supporter of the 'remain' campaign.
Unluckily for me, I was also 17 and a bit too young to actually vote.
Being interested in politics, though,
this was one of the first major opportunities I had
to really engage with it on a truly international scale.
Unfortunately,
both the tone and the outcome of the referendum
makes me wonder whether as young people,
we can ever really hope to identify
with the divisive politics we're seeing today.
I was interested in the EU referendum from the start.
Like I said, it was one of the first major opportunities I had
to get involved with real politics in the real world.
Because for young people,
politics can often seem so distant, unnecessary even,
to the extent where the most we know about it,
we can actually learn out of the history curriculum.
I remember a mock election we held at my school in 2015.
At best, when we tried to engage with the students,
we had yawns.
And at worst, we had a hall echoing with boos.
I remember thinking, surely, this isn't how politics work;
surely, there's a better way to communicate what matters.
So, when the EU referendum rolled along, I was excited to learn about the issues,
to debate with people who could vote
even if I couldn't.
As those arduous months of campaign went on,
I became more and more passionate about the result.
I tried to convince friends, family, people on the street,
and I knew all to vote 'remain'.
So you can imagine, on June the 24th, when I woke up, I was shocked.
What on earth had gone wrong?
I genuinely felt betrayed,
and actually, a huge sense of bitterness towards those who voted 'leave'.
Some of my own family included.
As the day progressed and the voter stats rolled in,
a somewhat frustrating picture began to emerge:
The older you were, the more likely you were to have voted 'leave'.
Young people could have kept us in,
except not enough of them actually turned out.
This presented a dilemma for me:
Who is I supposed to be angry at?
Those who voted leave or those who didn't vote at all?
A few weeks later, once the shock had worn off
and I'd spent far too much time signing online petitions,
writing Facebook posts
and feeling sorry for myself,
I realised I had to stop fixating on the past to move forward.
I had to look forward
and reconnect with the people around me who went on with life,
as I isolated myself in that cocoon of liberal self-righteousness.
(Laughter)
I had to put down the tabloids, log off social media;
I actually had to talk to people.
I may have been surprised by the results in June,
but I was even more surprised with the response I got from people
who I tried to talk to earnestly.
As it turns out,
actually listening to someone else's opinion
dramatically increases the chance of them listening to yours.
(Murmuring)
And so -
(Applause)
And so, as I went through that process,
I think I started to understand
why people are so disengaged with the political process:
We don't feel like we're being listened to by those in power.
People feel like their opinions aren't being heard.
And I think this is why so few young people went out and voted.
We didn't feel like our voices counted for anything, collectively.
This is a problem,
and we need to find a solution to that.
We need to find a way to reignite that interest,
that desire in youth to - for lack of a better term -
set the world on fire.
Maybe the solution lies in politics itself.
Maybe if politicians could stop that repetitive cycle
of petty disagreements and populist agendas
and they talked about the real issues,
we could do so too.
Maybe in the next few weeks leading up to that snap general election,
we could see the first steps of this;
we can take that path.
The key to that, I think, is we have to listen and we have to talk.
Talk to those people you would never normally talk to.
If we listen to the opinions you haven't ever heard,
and if we have those conversations,
maybe people will feel they are being listened to,
and just maybe, they can think they're part of the solution.
Ultimately,
all of our voices carry weight -
not just those with a conforming opinion,
not just the 52%.
I think it's our choice whether to divide or to unite,
because we're all different,
but surely that means if we work together,
we can be so much stronger than any one person or group can be.
Thank you.
(Applause)