This is what young people really think of modern Britain. The picture is bleak

Telegraph

3 days ago

Crime
This week Mexico reportedly advised its citizens to exercise 'a high degree of caution' when travelling to the UK. When a state plagued with cartel violence doubts your country's safety, something is seriously wrong.
New polling by Adam Smith Institute reveals an alarming consensus among young Britons: 61 per cent of 18-30-year-olds are concerned about violent crime in their area.
This worry cuts across ethnic backgrounds: 64 per cent of black, 60 per cent of white and 58 per cent of Asian youth share the same fear. Even Labour and Reform voters agree on this: 67 per cent of young Labour supporters and 67 per cent of young Reform UK supporters alike say they are concerned about violent crime in their neighbourhoods.
When a supermajority of the younger generation – regardless of ethnicity or politics – agrees on something, it's a flashing red light. And what they're telling us is clear: Britain has a public safety crisis.
These fears aren't just perceptions, though. Many forms of violent crime really are rising. Police data shows knife offences rose 4.4 per cent in the year ending March 2024 (to 54,587 incidents in England and Wales), one of the highest rates in Europe. In that same time period, robbery offences jumped by 8 per cent and shoplifting surged by 37 per cent.
While naysayers point out that overall crime rates were higher in the 90s, this long-term trend is misleading. It masks the fact that violent crime is climbing again. Even the Home Office acknowledged that some violent crimes have increased since 2014. Knife crime, in particular, has skyrocketed by 87 per cent over the past decade.
In other words, the 20-year decline in overall crime obscures a recent upswing in deadly violence. This is the reality underlying young people's anxiety: after years of improvement, violent crime is once again a growing threat.
Foreign conflict
The ASI polling found that 75 per cent of 18-30-year-olds believe that the risk of Britain becoming involved in a war has increased compared to five years ago.
War already rages in Eastern Europe as Russia crashes against Nato's borders. Militant groups like the Houthis strike global supply chains while, in the Far East, China grows increasingly brazen in its aggression against Taiwan.
Yet, as fears of conflict grow, Britain's armed forces are at their weakest in over three centuries, crippled by a dysfunctional procurement system and personnel shortages.
The Royal Navy, once the Lord of the Seas, is now dangerously depleted. Its escort fleet has dwindled to just 14 operational frigates and destroyers, down from nearly 60 in the 1980s. Frigate numbers are set to drop even further by year-end.
Labour has promised a ' tenfold more lethal ' military but without any concrete financial backing – only pledging a defence spending increase to 3 per cent of GDP by 2034. The review lacks real commitment or near-term funding, pushing essential capabilities such as submarines into the distant 2040s. As former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace put it: ' even Putin will be dead by then.'
And closer to home, domestic policies have left Britain ill-equipped to fight a major war. No country has ever succeeded on the battlefield with a shrinking domestic industrial base, a stagnant economy and a divided society. Yet this is precisely where Britain finds itself.
Job Prospects
The latest polling also lays bare the degree of economic anxiety gripping Britain's younger generation. Overall, 60 per cent of 18-30-year-olds believe that finding a well-paid and satisfying job will become harder over the next five years. This is a bleak verdict on the stagnant wages, record-high taxes and unrelenting competition for fewer jobs that has characterised Britain in recent years.
Yet beneath this consensus lies a striking ethnic divide. Young black Britons are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to say that the job market will actually improve (47 per cent vs 22 per cent). This disparity suggests differing expectations rooted in divergent experiences of opportunity. For many white young people, record-high taxes, soaring housing costs and sluggish wage growth seem to have narrowed their horizons and shaded their outlook more so than their black counterparts.
By contrast, a sizeable minority of black respondents – perhaps buoyed by 'positive action' initiatives, like an internship scheme at MI5 and MI6 which recently went viral for explicitly prioritising candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds – are more optimistic about employment.
NHS Quality
Young people are deeply divided over the state of our health service. While 34 per cent of 18-30-year-olds believe NHS services have improved in recent years, 46 per cent say they have worsened. And there is a significant gender gap on this issue. A majority of young women (55 per cent) feel that care quality has declined, compared with 36 per cent of men.
This gendered gulf reflects the heavier reliance women place on NHS services, from reproductive health to mental-health support, and underscores the growing frustration with inaccessible GP appointments, ballooning waiting lists and understaffed clinics.
The perception that half of female patients have experienced a tangible drop in quality should ring alarm bells in Whitehall. It is no longer enough to tout headline funding figures; ministers must deliver reforms that cut waiting times, bolster frontline staffing and leverage technology for smarter triage.