Last Thursday (08/11/2018), I attended a debate at Trinity School in Shirley, concerning whether Brexit will be a betrayal of the future of the British youth. The debate was between Coloma Convent Girls’ School, the proposition, and Trinity School, the opposition. Though one of the judges mentioned that it was his “third time” judging a debate about Brexit, he and many other people (myself included) were gripped the entire time through.

Of course, there were many issues discussed. The proposition mentioned the loss of free movement in the EU (meaning that British youth will no longer be able to benefit from the Erasmus scheme), which is beneficial to many, the decline of the NHS post-Brexit and the strain on public services and other companies due to lack of employees. The opposition were good in rebutting most of the points, such as the fact that there are many non-EU migrants working in the UK and that it is very unlikely that Erasmus won’t be affected.

Betrayal to other groups of people was discussed in the debate, such as the betrayal to the rest of the UK and to democracy. The youth (under-18s) could not vote in the referendum, so could not voice their opinion at the time to remain. However, out of the young adults (those over 18) that did vote, 75% voted to remain. Significant, yes, but not when there was only a 65% turnout of young voters in 2016, compared to 90% of the older generation. From this, a very good question was raised from the floor: does this mean the youth betrayed themselves? As said earlier, since youth was defined as an under-18, they couldn’t vote, hence relied on people to vote for them. But out of the young people that could vote and decided not to, why did they decide not to? In response to this, the argument of misinformation and uncertainty were raised.

One point that I strongly agreed with that was raised by the opposition was the disregard for older members of society as we centre the discussion of votes around the youth. The votes earlier generations count just as much as the votes of later generations and there is no reason that we should exclude them for our selfish reasons. After all, they were most likely voting in the country’s best interest, as most people did, whether they voted leave or remain. Hence, the biggest betrayal of them all, would be betrayal to democracy. After all, 52% of the country voted to leave. What would be the point of including the whole country in the referendum if we’re just going to look at the votes from a certain age group and disregard the rest?

During the judging process, I talked to those from the opposition to asked them what they really think about Brexit’s affect on the future of the youth. One said he didn’t care. It was understandable because after all, we hear about it day in day out (including in this article), so some of us just want the politicians to get on with it and whatever happens, happens. Another said he did agree with what he was arguing (Brexit won’t be detrimental to the future of the youth).

After an enjoyable debate, the judges concluded that Trinity won 72 – 66.