Article

Culture

Education

Politics

26 February 2025

6 min read

Does Gen Z crave the dictator?

If young Brits are turning away from democracy, here’s how to stop it.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A cat with a small black moustache marking snarls while sitting in front of a tablet.

Kanashi on Unsplash

I knew something was seriously wrong when I hosted a live interactive online assembly for a couple of thousand sixth formers last year. Given a range of emojis the one that was chosen most to represent how they felt about politics wasn’t a thumbs up, or sleeping face, - it was the pile of poo emoji. The vast majority also expressed a deep distrust in government believing they neither listened to nor cared about them. It was then that I realised democracy was in trouble—and not just on the global stage. Here in the UK, a deeply worrying trend is emerging: more than half of Generation Z (those aged 13-27) believe the country would be better off under a dictator.

Recent controversial polling from Craft, commissioned by Channel 4, reveals that 52 per cent of Gen Z believe the UK should be run by a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections. Even more alarmingly, 33 per cent think the country would be better off if the army were in charge. If that doesn’t make us sit up and take notice, consider this: nearly half (47 per cent) of Gen Z believe our society must be radically changed through revolution.

These numbers are staggering. For those of us who have grown up with a strong commitment to democracy, it is unthinkable that the generation raised with the most freedom, the most access to information, and the greatest digital connectivity could be so willing to give up their right to vote, protest, and hold leaders accountable. But before we rush to condemn, we need to ask the hard question: why do so many young people apparently feel this way?

A lost faith in politics

What if it isn’t so much that Gen Z has turned against democracy, but that they feel democracy has turned against them? Think about it. Their schools are crumbling. Their teachers are stressed. If they need mental health support or special needs support, they have either a long wait or a hard fight on their hands and probably both. If they want to go to university, they have to take on a debt that will last longer than the time they have been alive. And pity help them if they want to buy a house - statistics suggest they will probably have to wait until they are 33 years old to even think about getting onto the property ladder.

You might think that these struggles would force Gen Z to become more politically active. But this generation remains the least politically engaged group in the UK. Whilst it is true that currently many are too young to vote, there is also a large proportion who is too disconnected to see the relevance of formal politics. Voter turnout for young people has been abysmal in the last three UK general elections:

2015: 43 per cent
2017: 54 per cent (a temporary spike due to Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal)
2019: 47 per cent

Compare that to the 70 per cent plus turnout for over-65s, and the message is clear: young people aren’t voting, and in return, politicians aren’t speaking to them. Which only exacerbates the problem. Despite the Labour Party manifesto promise that they would introduce voting at 16, they seem to be in no hurry to introduce the reform.

While Gen Z engagement with traditional politics is low, their political leanings have shifted. Over the past two decades, Gen Z has moved slightly to the centre-left, while older generations tend to lean centre-right. Today, age is a stronger predictor of voting behaviour than social class, which is a dramatic shift from previous decades. Though Gen Z is more liberal overall, they are also more radical in their discontent—and that’s where the real danger lies.

When young people feel unheard, they don’t just disengage—they seek alternatives. Their frustration has left them susceptible to radical ideas and strongman narratives. While previous generations turned to grassroots activism, protests, and community engagement, Gen Z is more likely to be influenced by leaders they can follow online - like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Nigel Farage, who offer clear, confident, and often extreme critiques of the system.

The result? Despite strong examples in the positive activism of Greta Thunberg, Marcus Rashford and Malala who have used democratic means to make a positive difference, there is a growing number of young people who see democracy as weak and ineffective, and dictatorship as strong and decisive.

A wake-up call

But there is hope. By engaging young people directly there is an opportunity to change the trajectory. That’s what we discovered at our online interactive event for sixth formers. One of the most powerful voices at the event was Sophia, a recently turned 18-year-old Ukrainian refugee, who spoke about her experience fleeing war. She told her story of being separated from her father who was in Ukraine fighting for democracy. She shared how Ukrainians are fighting—not just with weapons, but with their lives—for the very democracy that young Brits are so ready to discard. Her message to British students was simple: “You don’t know how lucky you are.” She challenged them to see democracy not as a broken system, but as one that requires their participation to work.

It was a powerful moment. And it proved something vital: when young people hear real stories, from real people, they begin to see the consequences of the choices they are flirting with. As a result of that event, thousands of young people signed up to vote at the electoral commission.

Rebuilding trust in democracy

So what can be done? Here are three crucial steps.

Make politics relevant to Gen Z. Young people do care about issues like climate change, mental health, and social justice. But they are turned off democratic political solutions by the bureaucracy, mud-flinging and dragging timescales. By taking time to explain to them the processes, to involve them in the campaigns and to improve accessibility to politics and highlight the difference they can make, we may find that our most disconnected demographic could become democracy’s greatest asset.

Rebuild Gen Z’s trust in leadership. Scandals and dishonesty have left Gen Z cynical. We need leaders who are transparent, accountable, and willing to listen. We need parties who will do what they said they would do in their manifestos and on the doorsteps. We need Members of Parliament who are committed to spending time with the young people they are supposed to represent so that relationships of trust can be deemed possible again.

Empower Gen Z. There are initiatives out there—like our interactive live assembly and the G-EPIC project—that prove a simple truth: when young people feel heard, they engage. When they are inspired, they engage. When they are empowered to participate in the political process, they engage. Perhaps if we create more spaces for them to speak, lead, and act, they will step forward to shape the future.

History shows that democracy is never guaranteed—it must be fought for and protected by every generation. It also requires constant effort to ensure it serves all communities without scapegoating, persecuting, or marginalizing. And history warns us that without democracy, most dictators quickly become tyrants.

The challenge before us is urgent: we must help Generation Z recognize the power they hold to shape their world—before they surrender it to leaders who would take that power away from all of us.

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Article

Comment

Ethics

Politics

War & peace

23 June 2025

5 min read

We must invest in defence, fast - it’s the only moral thing to do

The responsible use of force today precludes pacifism

Emerson Csorba

Emerson Csorba works in deep tech, following experience in geopolitics and energy.

Amid a bombed alley, a victim is helped to walk by a rescue worker

Aftermath of a Russian drone attack, Odesa, Ukraine.

Dsns.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In May 2016, I was hiking the Southwest Coast Path in a group, trudging through dense forest between Lyme Regis and Weymouth, when a distinctly unsettling event occurred. As we moved along a narrow trail, a buzzing sound began—we assumed we had disturbed a bee’s nest. We quickened my pace, but the buzzing continued. Eventually, we emerged from the woods and looked up. The sound had not come from bees, but from a drone that had been following us.

I will never forget that sound; the eerie sense of something pursuing you, but unseen. In a recent BBC special on the war in Ukraine, a journalist documents the now-pervasive use of drones, the journalist and Ukrainian soldiers hiding under the cover of forest as a Russian drone scans the area, before escaping to their car in which an AI voice says ‘Detection: multiple drones, multiple pilots, high signal strength’ as they journey overground. This is the new era of covert warfare, where the enemy strikes without being easily identified. You hear the hum, but the source is elusive.

In the coming years, this kind of psychological warfare will make its way into Western cities. Terrorist attacks will shift from in-person confrontations—like the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury—towards remote, anonymous assaults: drones drifting from overseas into coastal cities to target civilians, or swarms carrying out mass attacks in dense downtown cores. The aim will be psychological trauma at scale. Civilians will grow hesitant to leave home, hyper-sensitive to the buzz of anonymous drones in their own areas. Iran recently declared that no US, British, or French base is safe from retaliation in the emerging Israel–Iran war. It is not difficult to imagine Western cities soon being viewed as legitimate targets.

We are entering a time of intensified conflict, with national security becoming the dominant framework for policymaking. The watchword of UK government policy is ‘security,’ and—writing now from Montréal—the recent Canadian election was framed around which party and leader could best protect Canadians from external threat. In this context, even domains once governed by cooperation are transformed into zero-sum contests, because national security framing by its nature shifts focus from reciprocity to limitation of the other.

Free trade, for example - fundamentally the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services as part of the creation of value - becomes, in a security-focused world, a question of containment. Trade, in a security-focused world, is turned on its head, free trade becoming trade wars. Fairness (in which the pie is grown and shared across multiple people) is replaced by interest, whether the interest of countries or communities and individuals within them seeking to protect themselves. As US–China competition escalates, we can expect human relations—among both states and citizens—to become even more zero-sum.

In such an environment, do morals still matter? When the enemy grows more ruthless and more innovative in an era of national security, must we match them in kind? Or is it still possible to uphold principles while defending ourselves?

Restraint and humility are still critical virtues—but must not be mistaken for weakness.

In a recent Times column, Juliet Samuel suggested that gestures of non-aggression—such as Finland’s 2015 destruction of its one million landmine stockpile—now appear dangerously naïve. Ukraine, for its part, has rightly disregarded the Ottawa and Oslo (banning cluster munitions) conventions. Its survival depends on ingenuity, rapid technological development (for instance through the work of funds such as D3), and collaboration with its allies to prototype and deploy advanced systems.

Reinhold Niebuhr, in Moral Man and Immoral Society, contends that to be moral, one must possess the capacity for force—‘power must be challenged by power.’ That power, however, must be exercised with responsibility, humility, and moral purpose. Nigel Biggar, my former doctoral supervisor and a key figure in the Niebuhr tradition of Christian realism, argues in In Defence of War that war can be justified on balance when it meets the criteria of jus ad bellum: just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, proportionality, and reasonable prospect of success.

War, in this reading, can express a ‘kind harshness’—a form of judgment exercised in defence of victims. Like Niebuhr, Biggar grounds his argument in Augustinian realism: the world is fundamentally good, yet broken. Because evil persists, the moral use of force becomes necessary to uphold what is right. I believe this to be true, and directly applicable to the national security-focused world in which we find ourselves.

What does this mean then for Western countries as national security reasserts itself as the central organising principle of governance?

It means significant and urgent investment in defence and deep technology, including for instance emerging capabilities like cognitive warfare and neuroadaptive systems (wearables that enhance soldiers’ performance in live combat), counter-drone systems for urban, rural, and maritime environments, and next-generation electronic warfare and geospatial intelligence.

If drone attacks intensify at sea—such as those carried out by the Houthis to disrupt global shipping routes—counter-drone systems will be vital to ensure safe passage. In a world of manipulated narratives and disinformation, geospatial intelligence will serve as a source of truth, helping establish what is actually happening on the ground. And as agentic AI grows increasingly capable of manipulating users—through sycophancy, persuasion, and other techniques—oversight technologies like Yoshua Bengio’s new LawZero project will be essential for maintaining objectivity and integrity.

The responsible use of force today precludes pacifism, averting violence altogether. It means maintaining—and advancing—the capability for overwhelming force, so it is ready if needed. Morality in an era of national security demands investment in defence technologies at speed, to stay several steps ahead of adversaries. A ‘whole-of-society’ approach, as recommended in the recent UK Strategic Defence Review, means preparing citizens with such a mindset. Restraint and humility are still critical virtues—but must not be mistaken for weakness. Western nations must be prepared to act swiftly, decisively, and with the deterrent power that peace requires.

This is the world we are entering: one in which governments and civilians alike must be ready for unexpected threats. The hum of a drone overhead is more than a sound—it is instead a warning, reminding not only Ukrainians but those currently in peaceful situations, to prepare ourselves for potential conflicts to come. The appropriate response is not retreat, but the responsible and moral exercise of power: a necessary duty if we are to preserve peace, freedom, and justice in a world increasingly intent on contesting them.

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