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The Guardian view on prolonging kidulthood: Britain prices young adults out of independent life | Editorial

More young people live with parents as low wages, insecure work and unaffordable housing turn family support into another source of inequality In Britain, young people are expected to become independent in their 20s. Yet the UK’s economic model increasingly denies them the means to do so. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), commissioned partly for the BBC, finds that the proportion of 25-year-olds living with their parents has risen from 25% in the 1990s to 42% today. The research says “co-residence” among those in their 20s and 30s has increased by more than a third over two decades. The rate in Britain remains well below Italy and Spain, where leaving home is frequently more about finding a partner than turning 18, going to university or starting work. But that is scant comfort: Britain appears to be slowly drifting towards a southern European experience without the family culture that makes this feel normal. Young Britons struggle to move out of “the hotel of mum and dad” for obvious reasons. Employment for those aged 25 has fallen for both women and men. Real earnings have barely progressed beyond the level reached around two decades ago. Hardly a surprise, then, that home ownership at 25 has dropped from 43% in the mid-1980s to 15% today. As the IFS notes, the changing age, educational, ethnic or migrant composition of the population might have been expected to reduce rates of co-residence. Instead, the “declining affordability of housing” has driven them up. In short, young adults are not just opting for a cheaper domestic arrangement to save money. They are submitting to it because they have less control over their lives as the options narrow for housing and work. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like…

The Guardian Politics2 min read
Politics From The Guardian Politics

Even GB News cringes as Reform turns dementia patients into a political football

Honest Bob was rattled at the idea of joining cross-party talks on social care. Why bother behaving as a serious opposition? When you’ve lost the trust of GB News, when you’re too deranged, too extreme and too outright mendacious for your biggest fan, then you know you are in trouble. You can almost sense the panic beginning to set in at Reform HQ. No longer topping the opinion polls. A new prime minister resetting the dial, the public increasingly choosing optimism over grievance. A party mired in financial sleaze. A leader turning into a laughing stock in his head-to-head with a dustbin. It was never meant to be this way for Reform. They thought they were the winners. Continue reading...

The Guardian Politics5 min read
Politics From The Guardian Politics

I’ve seen what can confound Farage on his home turf: optimism. People need a politics that offers them that | Owen Jones

You can’t blame his constituents in Clacton for their pessimism – because they have been let down for years Under battered England flags, cynicism, pessimism and exhaustion stalk the streets of Clacton. As the byelection called by Nigel Farage approaches, one young couple do not know which candidates are standing. Neither has ever voted. Living in Britain is “depressing”, says the woman in a black floral dress. “The cost of living these days is stupid,” says her partner, wearing a black and grey mechanic’s shirt and a black and red cap. They both work 40 or 50 hours a week, he says, yet “we’re still struggling to pay rent, food, electric, everything else”. They rarely get a day off, and time spent together is rarer still. Continue reading...

The Guardian Politics6 min read