Watching young people in France take to the streets, you might wonder why we haven’t reached the same point in Britain. Young Brits have a lot to be angry about, but the difference is that we might book a flight abroad before we grab our placards.
Young people in France have been protesting for weeks. More than 6,000 people were arrested in France in just over a week, and nearly nine in ten were under 18. The anger began around poor school conditions but has grown into something bigger. These young people are fed up with a system that offers them little reason to believe things will improve.
Protesting is ingrained in French culture. Young people are taught about the French Revolution at school, with the country’s history of revolution dating back to 1789. A French friend told me that the curriculum emphasises challenging authority as a fundamental right. In Britain, we are taught to get our heads down and get on with it. We have become so accustomed to things being difficult that we treat struggling as an individual failure rather than questioning why life is getting harder.
But British young people have just as much reason to be fed up. The cost of living is eating into our wages before we have had a chance to enjoy them. Graduates are struggling to find jobs in what recruiters have described as the worst graduate jobs market in three decades. More than one in ten final-year university students plan to look for work abroad, according to one survey, up from 7.8 per cent in 2024. Countries like Australia or Canada can look more attractive when the grass at home feels dead.
Then there are the 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 who were not in education, employment or training between April and June 2026. That is almost a million young people who have not found a place in the system we are constantly told will give us purpose. We grow up hearing that hard work pays off. Yet now, it’s difficult to feel invested in a country that seems to put very little investment in you.
A 2026 UK Youth Poll found that 50 per cent of 16 to 29-year-olds would never take up arms and fight for Britain. I do not think that is simply a case of young people being lazy or unpatriotic. It reflects a growing disconnect between young people and a country that is asking for their loyalty without giving them much confidence in their future. Even going to university no longer guarantees the future we were promised, thanks to rocketing student loan debts and a job market under threat from AI and a struggling economy.
In Britain, our anger often takes a different form. We look for jobs abroad, take on extra shifts or spend hours researching how to make our money stretch further. We might write posts on social media which briefly go viral. Graduates dressed as sharks protested outside Parliament in February over student loan repayments. But when British protests are reduced to costumes and memes, it becomes easier for politicians to dismiss our anger rather than take it seriously.
It’s not that young Brits are a silent generation. We have seen huge demonstrations over Gaza and continued anger over student loans. But there are growing restrictions on how people can demonstrate, with the threat of arrest or fines making disruptive action feel like a risk many cannot afford.
I cannot imagine many British politicians joining students on the front line of protests, as Saint-Denis mayor Bally Bagayoko did in Paris. Here, young people can struggle to get a meeting with someone in power, let alone have a politician stand beside them when the police arrive. It is hardly surprising that many feel nobody is coming to help.
After the protests in France, violence, riots and looting broke out in French cities – acts which are never justifiable. The 2011 England riots showed that when anger boils over here, there can be devastating consequences too. Most young people aren’t willing to take the risk now – a criminal record could make an already miserable job hunt even worse.
Young people are tired of being told to work harder when the rewards keep moving further out of reach. France is a warning sign for what happens when young people’s frustration becomes impossible to ignore. We are not any less angry in Britain. Politicians should stop mistaking our silence for satisfaction. I think Britain could reach a similar breaking point in the future, but for now, we are more likely to look for a future abroad than take to the streets.
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