I was sitting on the sofa watching television with my father last week when the conversation turned to politics.
I’ve been able to vote for the past eight years and let slip that, at today’s elections, I intended to vote Green. His reaction was far more vehement than expected.
‘Why on earth would you do that?’ he said, aghast. ‘Zack Polanski would be a complete and utter disaster!’
At first I was shocked by the strength of his feelings, but then it struck me that he and I are an almost comical representation of a national political divide – or rather chasm – that splits down both generational and gender lines.
For a Conservative-voting, middle-aged City businessman such as my dad, Polanski would feel like a disaster.
He’ll crash the economy, said Dad, warming to his theme. Taxes will soar, businesses fold, not to mention he’s a total fraud.
But many young women across the country disagree. Why wouldn’t they want radical change, they argue, when their lives look so restricted and lacking in opportunity compared with those of their parents?
What reason do they have to protect the status quo?
As the country votes for national assemblies in Scotland and Wales and in local elections across England, it’s not just our parents who disagree with us. So too do many of our male friends.
Two years ago, in the 2024 election, opinion was already diverging, with 23 per cent of women aged 18 to 24 voting Green versus 12 per cent of young men.
More recent YouGov polling – since the election of Polanski as leader of the Greens in September 2025 – puts current Green voting intention among women aged 18 to 24 at 44 per cent, versus 30 per cent for men of the same age.
So why are young women turning to the hard Left like this? Is it all the cult of Zack?
I spoke to a number of female contemporaries from different parts of the UK, but all middle class and well educated, and it boils down to two things.
One is a sense of having been horribly let down by current and previous politicians despite doing everything ‘by the book’.
And – call us naïve – the other is a desire to build a society where women are safe from rampant misogyny and people look after each other rather than constantly, sometimes viciously, competing among themselves.
Young women in their 20s have spent their lives doing everything ‘right’. We worked hard, got good grades, went to university… and then, after four years of strikes and three Covid lockdowns, were spat out into a rapidly shrinking jobs market with debts of more than £40,000.
I came out of a Russell Group university with a first in my degree, and it took me two years of searching to land a job. I am still living at home, aged 25, because rent in London would come to well over half my monthly salary.
After bills, student loan repayments, and travel, I would barely be able to eat.
For my parents’ generation, emerging into an expanding jobs market in the mid-1990s, with flats even in London affordable, it was a different world.
As Cicely Higham, an 18-year-old student from London who’ll be casting her first vote for the Greens – despite the fact that her father distrusts some of their policies – told me: ‘I used to wonder if there would be any point going to university because there might not be a job for me afterwards.’
Food prices alone have risen by 40 per cent since 2020 and just this week it was reported that London pubs are breaking the £10 a pint barrier.
I can’t afford to save up for anything, let alone a mortgage.
Cicely Higham told me: ‘I used to wonder if there would be any point going to university because there might not be a job for me afterwards’
Elsa Brayshaw says Polanski’s use of social media has transformed the Greens’ image from that of ‘a weird party that people don’t actually vote for’ to ‘standing a chance at winning an election’
Among many of my friends, there is an anxious air of exhaustion fuelled by being overworked, broke, single, directionless and – at the risk of sounding like a Jane Austen character – prospectless.
Into this bleak landscape strides our parents’ bête noire, Zack Polanski. Remember the party political broadcast he did in October last year with the slogan ‘make hope normal again’?
It showed him walking through a city street at dawn talking about the wealth gap and why so many of us are working so ridiculously hard to cover the basics.
My generation almost never watch conventional TV, yet that film pinged round on social platforms for weeks. Yes, there is something comical in the earnestness of it, but to us, it still struck a nerve.
There’s no doubt that Polanski’s clever use of social media has revolutionised the Green Party’s chances. Speaking directly to young people on platforms they use in a way that doesn’t seem patronising or cringe-worthy is a tactic it shares with Reform.
Elsa Brayshaw, 18, from south London, who also intends to vote Green today, says it has transformed the Greens’ image from that of ‘a weird party that people don’t actually vote for’ to ‘standing a chance at winning an election’.
One 25-year-old friend of mine, a charity worker from Coventry, signed up to join the Green Party after seeing similar videos.
Cicely adds: ‘Labour has taken for granted that young women are going to vote for them.’
Women in particular look around and see their quality of life shrinking.
The failing NHS weighs heavily. The pressure of financial insecurity and a brief brush with serious illness has left me hyperaware of the importance of accessible, affordable healthcare.
As Elsa says, we have ‘a healthcare system that is crumbling’ and women seem to be feeling the effects more than men. I know I want children, but I’m terrified of having them.
According to University of Oxford research published recently by Mbrrace-UK, in the past 15 years, the UK maternal death rate has shot up 20 per cent, and deaths from treatable conditions in pregnancy and post-partum are up 52 per cent.
Anna Stenning, a 26-year-old working in events marketing, says she’s had to wait months to get consultant appointments for women-specific issues.
And for those who want to work in the NHS? Hannah Rahman, 18, an aspiring medical student from London, also feels let down by the Government and fears being unable to find a job when she makes it through medical school.
‘There’s such a bottleneck,’ she says. ‘You’ve got all these doctors and they’re just not getting jobs because there aren’t enough speciality places.’
Hannah tells me that she has friends at school who are working not for extra money to spend on clothes, but to help keep food on the table.
Women, it seems, are aware of economic inequality in a way that men are not.
In 2024, 40.7 per cent of women aged 18 to 34 ranked cost of living as their top concern while only 29 per cent of men did the same.
Are younger voters losing faith in Britain’s traditional political parties?
Hannah Rahman, 18, an aspiring medical student from London, also feels let down by the Government and fears being unable to find a job when she makes it through medical school
As Elsa said: ‘We’re seeing the rich get richer, at the same time as more and more people can’t afford anything.’
For all the young women I spoke to, immigration was not a concern, nor were they fearful of trans rights: the political gender divide is not a culture war, it’s an economic one.
Unfortunately no political party is perfect. I have an issue with Polanski’s undoubtedly thoughtless and offensive reaction to the police handling of the Golders Green stabbings last week and believe anti-Semitism has no place anywhere, let alone in politics.
Like any voter for any party, I don’t agree with all Green Party policies either. Both Hannah and Elsa mentioned that they are unsure about the Greens’ policies on disarmament and the party’s negativity towards nuclear power, which also weighs on my mind as it can be a great way to transition to clean power sources.
Cicely feels that some of their policies are ‘too impulsive’ or implausible at the moment.
Anna says: ‘I don’t actually want the Greens in charge of the country, but I do want to see the area I live in become greener and more sustainable. Better recycling would be great. I can hear my dad’s voice at the back of my brain saying he thinks it is a wasted vote.’
Regardless, she would vote for them in the local elections, if not in a General Election.
Young women aren’t clueless – they read manifestos, they listen to political broadcasts – and the alternatives fill us with gloom.
The Tories feel toothless and pointless, few of us have it in us to defend Labour any more, and I couldn’t tell you what the Lib Dems stand for.
As for Reform, well, they want to scrap the Equality Act ‘on day one’. Why on earth would a well-educated, ambitious young woman vote for that?
At a time when the manosphere and its pantomime villains seem intent on rolling back women’s rights, we’re hardly going to cede the protections we have in law.
For all the young women I spoke to, immigration was not a concern, nor were they fearful of trans rights: the political gender divide is not a culture war, it’s an economic one, writes Rosie Beveridge
And there is another point here. A rising tide of misogyny, of online hate especially directed against women and girls, makes us long for politicians who offer a different vision of society, for a party that isn’t going to tinker around the edges or cosy up to the billionaire tech bros, but deliver changes to make women safer and less vulnerable. It is, after all, their job.
The people I interviewed for this piece all independently raised the same reason for voting Green.
‘It is the politics of hope,’ says Cicely. Elsa says the Greens focus on ‘how we can make the world a better place’.
There is something about this optimistic, trust-building, locally rooted politics that presents a potent combination to young women.
‘I don’t know anyone who’s not voting Green. The important conversation is about how to make people’s lives better,’ says Hannah.
‘They’re like a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m very excited to be voting. It’s such a big thing to be able to have a say.’
So, today I too will be voting Green. Sorry, Dad, I hope you can forgive me.
