Heather Rolfe aruges that campaigners for a closer relationship with the EU will find it challenging to engage young people in a debate that has passed them by.

In the months following the Brexit vote it was widely noted that older people had swung the vote to Leave while young people had largely voted to remain. Almost three-quarters (73%) of 18–24-year-olds voted Remain, and only 27% Leave, compared to a 60%/40% split among the over 65s. Media articles talked of baby boomers ‘messing things up’, or ‘snatching away’ young people’s freedom of movement.

It is often assumed that the 2016 vote division by age remains, and even that anti-Brexit feeling among young people has become stronger. Recent research by British Future on public attitudes to a future UK-EU relationship casts doubt on this narrative. Findings suggest that pro-EU campaigns cannot take the youth vote for granted.

It’s true that 18–24-year-olds are more likely to believe it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU (57% vs 49% for all age groups), but they are much more likely than others to say they don’t know (31% vs 19%). Across a range of other questions on the future UK-EU relationship they are also more likely to lack an opinion or to lack understanding of key aspects, including free movement.

Nearly a quarter of young people (23%) say they don’t know whether the UK should hold a second referendum or not, compared to 15% across all age groups. When asked how they would vote in a future referendum, they are least likely to support staying out (17% vs 29% of all age groups).  But they are also much more likely than others to say they don’t know or would not vote (39% vs 25% of all ages).

‘Don’t know’ responses to key questions on the UK’s membership of the EU by age group

As recorded by many other surveys on immigration, ours found that young people aged 18-24 have more positive attitudes to immigration than other age groups and are less likely to favour reductions in immigration numbers. But this does not necessarily mean they are more in favour of EU migration or free movement. They are less likely than those in other age groups to say it should be easier to work in another EU country (46% vs 53%). They are also more likely than others to say they don’t know whether post-Brexit immigration controls should be kept, whether they would accept free movement if it meant less trade or if they would support a range of measures to manage free movement (for example restrictions on state benefits).

All of this might be understandable given that they were children or adolescents at the time. However, it might also be expected that as young adults they would be more inclined than others to support the types of mobility that they, or their siblings, could benefit from. However, they are no more likely than others to support a closer UK-EU relationship for school trips or for study. And, strikingly, they are less likely than other age groups to support the Youth Experience Scheme, currently under negotiation, by 45% compared to 57% of all age groups.

To understand attitudes in more depth, we held eight focus groups – two of them with young people who could not vote in 2016. Participants said that Brexit was not their decision, whether they thought it had been a good idea or not. The idea that young people have disproportionately lost out was a stronger theme of the all-age groups than those with young people. However, when potential opportunities for young people were discussed with 18–24-year-olds, they did feel that they had few opportunities to study and work in the EU.

Participants of all ages liked the idea of Erasmus+, the EU’s funding scheme for education, training, youth, and sport which the UK will join in 2027. They also liked the idea of the Youth Experience Scheme. For both, support came with the condition that they are inclusive and available to young people facing financial or other barriers. Older people believed that Erasmus had largely benefited those from advantaged backgrounds. Young focus group participants said they would not know how to go about looking at study or work opportunities abroad and wanted help with this if they were to participate.

We had expected young people to be more in favour than they were of a closer UK-EU relationship in their survey responses and to be more engaged in the focus group discussions. Their detachment from the issues is partly because, as they said in the focus groups, they were too young to absorb the arguments around free movement, sovereignty and rule taking vs rule making. Few also said they had learned about the EU at school or discussed with family or friends. Wider research suggests they are not disengaged from politics in general, but are more interested in issues such as job insecurity, cost of living and housing affordability.

Are today’s 18–24-year-olds fundamentally different to those of 2016? Research before the referendum found similar levels of disengagement to now: only half said they were certain to cast a vote, compared to more than two-thirds in other age groups. Turnout in the referendum was also lower in areas with a higher proportion of young people.

The planned reduction in the voting age to 16 is seen as an opportunity to encourage interest in democratic engagement. However, more is needed if young people are to engage in the UK’s place in the EU. Their lives and opportunities are rarely part of the narrative of campaigners, politicians and the media and many do not see it as relevant to their lives. On the issue of youth mobility which offers them opportunities, the focus of the debate is on inward migration: how many EU citizens will come to the UK for work or study? Should numbers be capped and who will pay their study fees?

It might also be that opportunities to study and work abroad appeal to relatively few young people, even if barriers were removed. But we can only be certain if they are more involved in discussions about what a closer future relationship might mean for them.

By Dr Heather Rolfe, Director of Research, British Future.

The Met has launched an investigation following the Channel 4 broadcast (Alamy)

2 min read38 min

On Wednesday, the Met said that it had received several reports “relating to donations and polling involving a political party” following a broadcast by Channel 4 on Thursday.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Met said: “Detectives have assessed the information provided and determined that there are potential offences requiring investigation.”

They added: “The potential offences are similar in nature to matters already under investigation by the Met’s Special Enquiry Team relating to donations made to the same political party. As a result, these matters will form part of that ongoing investigation. “

It comes after a Verbatim and Channel 4 investigation appeared to show senior officials discussing how to disguise donations from foreign sources.

Under UK electoral law, foreign companies are not permitted to fund party activities.

A Met spokesperson said: “Following a broadcast by Channel 4 News on Thursday, 3 September, the Met received a number of reports relating to donations and polling involving a political party.

The statement added: “All allegations under investigation relate to potential offences under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. 

 

“As part of enquiries, detectives are seeking to obtain relevant footage relating to the broadcast on Thursday 3, September.

 

“Detectives continue to liaise closely with the Electoral Commission and Crown Prosecution Service as enquiries progress.”

When the investigation was first broadcast on Channel 4 last week, Reform UK said that the party had been the target of a “hoax”. But on Friday morning the party announced an investigation following the broadcast, with senior officials James Orr and Dan Jukes stepping down. 

While Reform had hoped to use its party conference in Birmingham over the weekend to regain its momentum after a difficult few months, senior figures were instead forced to face questions about the revelations. 

At the beginning of this year, The Hollywood Reporter suggested that an idea for a Game Of Thrones follow-up film centring around Arya was in the “very early” stages of development.

When asked about this speculation during a recent interview with The Guardian, however, Maisie made it clear that no one had been in touch with her about the supposed project.

“I saw that, too! I was like, huh?” she admitted.

Maisie then confessed she’s not even sure whether she’d be up for returning to the role that launched her career, which she last played in the final season of Game Of Thrones back in 2019.

“She would have to be developed in some way because I feel like I’ve changed so much, and I feel like what people loved about Arya is that she was always a child doing things that were quite grown-up,” Maisie claimed.

Hiroshima, 6 August 2026: Lanterns are floated in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome in memory of the victims of the world’s first atomic bomb attack | Image by: Associated Press / Alamy

7 min read14 min

The city of Hiroshima has a strange feeling to it. Like many places imbued with a tragic history or designated a place of pilgrimage, it is hard to ascertain whether it is because of what it represents and its prominence in the public imagination or because it is a place of ghosts and souls, of spirit and spirituality. I have had the same feeling in other places – in Lourdes; in Mycenae, Agamemnon’s city of violence – and I felt it again in Hiroshima.

I first visited as part of a Japanese school visit, when I was 21 and teaching in Kyushu, Japan’s southern island on the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme). I remember the orizuru, paper cranes. I remember the dome that withstood the ferocity of the A-bomb, and I remember the shadows of people burnt onto the stone. I remember reading the pledge to peace. I remember the consensus amongst my group of teachers that Japan would never touch the bomb. 

Today, in 2026 with the world on fire, on the 81th anniversary of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that consensus is breaking. The new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has avoided clarifying that Japan’s three nuclear principles – not to possess, produce or allow nuclear weapons to enter Japan – will remain. As the old architecture of non-proliferation crumbles, Japan’s neighbours sabre rattle – Russia threatens nuclear attack, North Korea expands its nuclear arsenal, China continues its military expansion, Iran squares up to America and European allies enter talks on advanced deterrence. The world has never been this close to nuclear war since the Cold War.

As if timed for an intervention, Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s diary, Hiroshima, 08:15: The Lost Memoir, records the moment and the immediate aftermath of the A-bomb and its human consequences. It is a personal recollection of the moment his community was hit by this brand-new weapon, marking an inflexion point – not only for warfare but for humanity. Tanimoto’s daughter, Koko, now in her 80s and one of the hibakusha or ‘survivors’ of that day, writes in the foreword: “We are the only people left who experienced an event that remains unique in human history. We have memory of it, and this memory is a very valuable one…. Memory is our hope for survival as human beings, and for the survival of the beautiful world we inhabit.”

When ‘Little Boy’ exploded above Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, Tanimoto, a 36-year-old methodist minister was outside of the city moving furniture from his church to a home as protection from air raids. He described it as “a sharp flash of light” and “a strong blast of wind”. The bomb became known in Japan as pikadon (the literal translation of ‘flash-boom’); 80,000 people died in the first few minutes – victims instantly vaporised or crushed to death.

As Tanimoto begins to run towards the city and his home, and black rain begins to fall, the vast numbers killed or injured becomes clear to him. “Skin from faces, hands, arms and breasts were stripped off or hanging lose… all faces were without expression… It seemed like a procession of ghosts.” Tanimoto rushes past victims, apologising for not staying to help. He runs through fire, with guilt that he has survived, and then reveals – with supreme unselfconsciousness – that he felt not the slightest pleasure in seeing his wife and child safe and was instead filled with indignation that a parishioner, who had visited the parsonage at the moment the bomb had hit, had died in their care.

His diary recounts starkly the devastation of that first day, of the search for remains when “not one piece of bone could be found”, buildings leaving no trace, relatives cremating the dead who would be dead themselves within a couple of days, of victims he pulled from the river only to find when he pulled on their hand “the skin of his hand slipped off as if it were a glove. When I laid my hands on the back of another man, the skin of his back came off”.

Tanimoto’s diary chronicles it all: the days and the months afterwards, how radiation sickness claimed the survivors, his feelings at the end of the war, and of the community as it tries to rebuild. It is a story of personal and community resilience, exploring duty and obligation, and how a war-ravaged country comes to terms with a peace – and a new relationship with its enemy.

Tanimoto dedicated the rest of his life to the pursuit of peace. His heroic efforts to rescue his community, rose to prominence in the Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey’s 1946 piece for The New Yorker, which brought the reality of the bomb home to the US public for the first time. But this is the first time we have been in receipt of Tanimoto’s own words – this diary had remained hidden, sitting quietly in one of Hersey’s folders stored at Yale University, until it was discovered by Hersey’s grandson in 2023.

His diary starkly recounts the devastation of that first day

 

The decision to drop the bomb still divides opinion – the cumulative total of lives lost because of the Hiroshima bomb is estimated at 140,000. The intense wartime study of the effects of radiation played little part in the political decision to drop the bomb.

The single-minded drive of the Manhattan Project which built it meant that its use had almost unstoppable momentum by the time the new US president Harry Truman took the decision to deploy it. The scientists were uneasy: “Well, I have my doubts, General Groves,” the ‘father’ of the atomic bomb J Robert Oppenheimer famously told the army officer in charge of the Manhattan Project, while Groves told a 1945 Senate hearing that radiation sickness was “a very pleasant way to die”.

Philip Morrison, a physicist with the Manhattan Project, told the BBC in 1975 that those working on the project knew intellectually very well both the short- and long-range effects of radiation. But he said, it was “seeing the living reality, the dying reality, is a very big difference to everyone, to the whole world. So I think we knew it, but we didn’t feel it”.

Tanimoto’s diary feels it – written with an absence of pathos, so straightforward in its telling, of the effects on man.

At the Pacific island American military base where Enola Gay had taken off, there was a big party on the night of the bomb. The military knew the end of the war was coming. But we are told by Morrison, “the scientists sat around looking morose and thinking about the end of the world”.

The publication of Tanimoto’s diaries, as the world races to arm itself, is another moment of reflection, a chance to pull back from the seemingly unstoppable momentum of war, and remember what can be lost, in a moment.

Monica Harding is Liberal Democrat MP for Esher and Walton

Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir

By: Kiyoshi Tanimoto

Publisher: Ebury Press

 

How to prevent or delay dementia onset

4 min read9 min

Since I was elected, I have listened to constituents describe the agony of watching someone they love approach the end of life. I have experienced that agony myself. When cancer claimed my wife, I witnessed the fear and helplessness that serious illness can bring in its final stages. I know what it means to wish you could do something – anything – to ease the suffering of a loved one. 

But having weighed the evidence, heard the experts and watched Parliament grapple with this legislation, I am firmly convinced this bill is the wrong way to achieve it. Legislation should not be built simply around one’s own individual experience – laws must be fair and safe for all, and account for the vulnerabilities of every person who would be impacted. The evidence is now clear that this bill does not adequately account for it.

The government’s own new equality impact assessment on the bill highlights these concerns by acknowledging that, in jurisdictions where assisted dying operates, older people, who are often dependent on others for care, are the main recipients. It also records concerns that older and disabled people may experience subtle or overt pressure to end their lives prematurely. Disabled people are twice as likely to be victims of domestic abuse.

We have spent years assuring disabled people that dependence does not diminish their worth. We should think very carefully before now creating a system in which someone who is old, disabled or dependent and approaching the end of their life might conclude that the most dignified thing they can do for their family is to die.

The equality impact assessment finds ethnic minorities are also particularly vulnerable under this legislation. People from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to face structural pressures such as high rates of poverty, poorer healthcare access, lower quality care, and disproportionate levels of domestic abuse committed against Black and Asian women. Where age, disability and race inequalities intersect, the most vulnerable members of society could face enormous pressure to opt for a premature death that they may have otherwise not agreed to.

If we vote through the assisted dying bill this week, we will not be affirming an abstract principle about bodily autonomy, but choosing to accept the status quo that some members of vulnerable groups will almost certainly fall through the net. That danger is fundamentally incongruous with Labour’s entire philosophy.

It deeply troubles me that the government’s own impact assessment projects savings of up to £84.8m a year from earlier deaths under assisted dying, treating the death of someone who requires costly care as a fiscal saving for the state.

As legislators, we know that individual “choices” rarely take place in a vacuum. A woman facing domestic abuse or a disabled person navigating social pressure may be legally free to decide, yet not truly free of coercion, so why should that understanding vanish when the decision is whether to die?

And what alternatives are we offering? Access to palliative care is notoriously uneven and subject to a “postcode lottery”.

The better answer to suffering is to care better. Invest in hospices and palliative medicine, support unpaid carers, improve social care, tackle loneliness and protect older and disabled people from abuse. Above all, ensure that nobody approaching the end of life feels that their family would be better off without them.

Andy Burnham’s instincts were right when, at the very start of his premiership, he argued that fixing the broken care system is vital before entertaining further discussion on assisted dying. Our legacy in government should be this: we cared so much about uplifting the vulnerable that we concentrated our efforts on improving current conditions – not introducing a new and questionable assisted dying system that could endanger disadvantaged communities. 

Patrick Hurley is the Labour MP for Southport