Young people like the idea of a dictatorship – but they’d think twice when faced with its reality

A recent study shows that a third of our young people would prefer a dictatorship to democracy – Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Young people, eh? What are they like? If they’re not Just Stopping Oil they’re boycotting Zara for an ad campaign that could be loosely construed as a tasteless commodification of the war being waged in Gaza. Or at least it could if you are politically engaged and fiercely idealistic – as all young people should be.

Like a greasy T-zone, braces and sticking it to the man, activism is usually a phase. But it’s an important one. As Winston Churchill may or may not have said: “If a young man is not a liberal when he is 25, he has no heart. If he’s not a conservative by the time he’s 35, he has no brain.”

Lord only knows what he’d make of the frankly terrifying new finding that a third of our young people think dictatorship is a good idea. Research from the Open Society Foundations, a global network set up by billionaire philanthropist George Soros to promote democracy and justice, has revealed only 52 per cent of British people aged 18 to 34 think that democracy is a force for good.

Among those aged 55 or above (i.e. old enough to remember Ceausescu, Hoxha, Honecker et al) the figure is 79 per cent – which I still find a troublingly low figure but, hey ho, everyone’s allowed their own opinion. In A Democracy. Meanwhile, a full 29 per cent of young people felt that a “strong leader” who did not hold elections was “a good way to run a country”.

Flaming Norah. Maybe that’s what happens after 13 years of Tory rule and a revolving door of prime ministers, but at least Brenda “not another one!” from Bristol ought to be delighted.

It feels so wrong. Young people are supposed to rise up and protest and visualise a better future, not hang out bunting at the imposition of martial law. Admittedly, one-party rule would be a lot easier to get our heads round than the complexities of proportional representation but practice is very different from theory.

If Tui could be persuaded to lay on more (any) all-inclusive holiday packages to Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus or Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, so our gilded youth could discover the reality of living in an authoritarian state, I strongly suspect these whippersnappers would think twice.

They might prefer to give the polling booth a miss once every five years, but it’s a lot less onerous than the mandatory parades lionising the glorious leader who has, in his great wisdom, outlawed jeans and made piercings illegal for the sake of national cohesion.

In Belarus, insulting the president is punishable by up to five years in prison; commentators note that alcohol consumption is almost five times the global average. Not the most ringing of endorsements. Then again, I suppose dreaming of dictatorship and the literal abdication of power from the people is in itself an act of rebellion.

Peculiar and contrarian perhaps, but we can only hope it’s just a phase that will pass quicker than a Gen Zer can say “Who was Churchill?”

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