Conventional wisdom holds that young people in Britain are alienated from politics, with some claiming that this reflects a wider crisis of legitimacy that should be met by initiatives to increase citizenship. This article addresses these areas, presenting both panel survey and focus group data from first-time voters. It concludes that, contrary to the findings from many predominantly quantitative studies of political participation, young people are interested in political matters, and do support the democratic process. However they feel a sense of anti-climax having voted for the first time, and are critical of those who have been elected to positions of political power. If they are a generation apart, this is less to do with apathy, and more to do with their engaged scepticism about 'formal' politics in Britain.2

Over the course of the last decade, policy makers in Britain have become increasingly concerned about the apparent and persisting withdrawal by young people from the formal political process. In this article, the authors consider the results from a representative online national survey of 1025 British 18-year-olds conducted in 2011, including both those who voted at the 2010 General Election and those who did not. The findings reveal that young people do profess a commitment to the political process, although they consider that there are relatively few opportunities available for them to intervene effectively in formal political life. Our study also indicates that there is no uniform youth orientation to politics, and the data reveal that this generation's engagement with formal politics is complex and nuanced. Social class and educational history both appear to have a crucial bearing on political engagement, while views also differ according to ethnicity andto a lesser extentgender. The authors also consider the findings from 14 online focus groups with 86 young people who opted not to vote at the 2010 General Election. These findings enable us to consider what influenced these young people's patterns of (dis)engagement with politics.

Following the outcome of the 2001 and 2005 General Elections, when the numbers of abstainers outweighed the numbers of Labour voters on both occasions, much attention has focused upon the state of British democracy and how to enthuse the electorate, especially young people. While the government is exploring ways to make the whole process of voting easier, it may be failing to tackle the real problem-that youth appear to find the business of politics uninviting and irrelevant. This paper examines data derived from a nationwide survey of over 700 young people in order to shed light on what lies at the heart of young people's apparent disengagement from formal politics in Britain-political apathy or a sense of political alienation. The findings reveal that they support the democratic process, but are sceptical of the way the British political system is organised and led, and are turned off by politicians and the political parties. However, there is no uniform youth orientation to politics, and the data indicate that views differ according to social class, educational history, and also gender. However both ethnicity and region of the country in which young people live seem to have little influence in structuring political attitudes and behaviour.

Young people in Britain are often characterised as disconnected from the formal political process and from democratic institutions. Certainly their rate of abstention in general election contests over the last decade has led to concerns amongst the political classes that they have a disaffection from politics that is deeply entrenched and more so than was the case with previous youth generations, and may in the future become habit-forming. In this article, we

Young Cosmopolitans Against Brexit The June 2016 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union provided a major shock to the political establishment. The decision to leave the EU, by a margin of 52-48%, represented a rejection of what the vast majority of political and business elites considered to be in the country's best economic interests, in preference to returning sovereignty over political decision-making to the United Kingdom and reducing net migration. The Leave campaign was characterized by populist appeals to national identity and the (perceived) cultural threat posed by European integration. It also sought to capitalize on strong anti-establishment sentiment towards the British political elite. These events must be viewed within the broader context of the rise of authoritarian-nationalist forms of populism: from the success of farright parties in Central and Eastern Europe, including the Freedom Party in Austria, the Law and Justice party in Poland, and Fidesz in Hungary, to the election of Donald Trump in the United States.