If you laughed when Corbyn said this week that Labour would win an election in 2018, the joke's on you

“The media and many of us simply didn’t understand the views of young people in our country. They were turned off by the way politics was being conducted. We have to and must change that. The fightback gathers speed and gathers pace.” Those were the words of Jeremy Corbyn during his first speech as leader of the Labour Party in September 2015.

Back then, few predicted that Corbyn’s focus on changing the lives of young people would deliver one of the greatest political upsets in British political history.

In the weeks before the 2017 general election, there was one question that was being asked again and again: could young people change the course of this election? Though Theresa May was commanding double digit leads in the opinion polls and even some of Labour’s own MPs had taken to accepting a miserable defeat, some of us felt a rumbling outside of the traditional political space.

The perceived wisdom has always been that young people don’t vote and that they have no interest in politics. Though some were fascinated by the rise in political interest across my generation, not many seemed that interested in taking it seriously. The Tories still seem to think they can chuck a millennial railcard at the problem and watch it go away. Meanwhile, Labour was talking economic sense with a dose of social justice in a way that spoke to the young: raising corporation tax and rolling out more powers for HMRC to chase down tax avoiding companies, for instance, while stopping the benefits cuts which were barely saving any money in the first place.

And so the 2017 general election result and the Labour surge that left Tory MPs gasping came as a surprise to a lot of the mainstream punditry. Young people, ignored and mistreated for so long, gave the British establishment a bloody nose.

Reports regarding the actual turnout of young people during the election still vary widely. The truth is that we will never know exactly how many young people voted – the secret nature of the ballot ensures this. However, we do know how many young people were registered to vote. Working from the fact that 1.5 million new young people registered to vote we get some idea of the scale of engagement.

The earliest estimations pointed to a 72 per cent turnout of voters aged between 18 and 24. Later, Sky News placed the figure of young voters in this age group at 66.4 per cent (link 2), nearly matching the overall figure of 68.8 per cent turnout reported on the night. This approximately matched earlier polling that suggested 66 per cent of young people were determined to vote. According to Ipsos MORI, the turnout for voters of the same age grouping in the 2015 election was just 43 per cent.

Young people didn’t just turn out – they turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn. A survey of 14,000 people by former Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft found that 66 per cent of young people aged between 18 and 24 said they voted for Labour. YouGov polling shows that 66 per cent of 18 to 19 year olds voted Labour and that 62 per cent of 20 to 24 year olds did the same. Whatever source you consult, it is clear that young people moved towards the Labour Party in astonishing numbers.

This revolution shows no signs of stopping. More recent polls suggest that Labour’s support among the young is growing. Recent research by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that Labour’s support amongst students has reached a new high of 68 per cent, more than trebling since 2010 (Ilnk 4)and some way above the reported 55 per cent of students that backed Labour in the 2017 general election. Other polls show the Conservative Party losing support among the under-30s as Labour picks up even more votes. Link 5

Few things are certain in politics, but one thing that I am sure of is that this rise will continue. I am confident that 2017 will go down in history as the year that young people brought about a political rebellion that will change the course of history.

We do not know when the next election will come, but as long as Labour continues to offer young people radical solutions to current woes, the party can rest easy knowing that young voters will march alongside them into Number 10. Jeremy Corbyn this week said that he believes there will be a general election in 2018 and that Labour will “probably” win a majority. People laughed, just as they laughed in 2017. When will they come to realise that the joke’s on them?

Liam Young is the author of Rise: How Jeremy Corbyn Inspired the Young to Create a New Socialism