When it comes to politics, we’re our own worst enemy

It’s a universally held fact that students are, for the most part, very into politics. There’s clearly something about leaving home for the first time that forces every 18-year-old in the country to instantly develop very strong opinions.

That’s not a bad thing – political engagement is, when done right, a very good idea. It lets us have a say in the way the country is run and means we can influence decisions that affect us.

The problem, though, is that we’re constantly getting it wrong and shooting ourselves in the foot, failing to understand the consequences of our actions and undermining our credibility. When political changes happen that end up hurting us, it’s often our fault more than anyone else’s.

Probably should have just stayed at home

A quick look at the current Labour leadership contest is a perfect example of our typical short-sightedness. As expected, leftist activists are backing socialist nutter Jeremy Corbyn. Speak to Corbyn’s supporters and they’ll tell you he’s the only candidate who isn’t a Tory in disguise, all while peering over the top of their copy of Kapital.

The problem though is that if he wins, he’ll go up against Osborne in 2020’s election and lose disastrously because Britain is full of a lot of quietly-racist right-wing people, leaving us with another five years of Tory government. If you’re trying to achieve a socialist end, this isn’t the best path to go down.

Even if, by some miracle, he wins the election, we’ll quickly realise that while extreme leftism is all well and good while you’re a student with no income, it’s actively harmful when you’ve got a nice grad job in marketing, earning £40k a year and begging for every tax cut you can get. Backing Corbyn just means we’re not thinking about our future, trying to pretend we won’t all become the boring Tories we despise.

Of course, not all of us are falling for JezzyC. One politician we do all have the same opinion of though is oathbreaker Nick Clegg. We’ve all been conditioned to despise the poor “liar” after his infamous tuition fees u-turn, and as a result we single-handedly (more or less) obliterated the Lib Dems, with the NUS helping every step of the way with their idiotic poster campaign. Job done, yeah?

Except, if we’d been a little less harsh on the liberals, we’d have another Tory-Lib coalition at the moment. Instead, we’ve got a scarily authoritarian Tory majority, who’ve scrapped maintenance grants and bumped up tuition fees in their first few months in power. God knows what’s coming next, but it’s not looking good for young people.

We have no right to be angry at the Tories for what they’re going to do over the next five years, because we did this. At no point did we stop to think about what we were doing. Whether it’s turning Ed into a bizarre caricature courtesy of Milifandom, or the NUS supporting a terrorist-sympathising organisation and banning Coke in an absurd effort to save Palestinians, nothing we do in politics makes sense.

Given this, it’s no surprise we’re not taken seriously by the rest of the country when we consistently show how little we understand about the world. Instead of being a young and engaged force to be reckoned with, we’re a joke that politicians ignore and honestly, who can blame them?