The journalist and ardent campaigner Sarah Woolley once gave me some advice that I have been turning over in my head ever since: вЂњFind three causes you care about,вЂќ she said, вЂњand focus on those.вЂќДЄ rentersвЂ™ union protest in Abbey Wood in south-east London, where a couple was due to be evicted after falling behind on rent during the pandemic, November 2021. You cannot care вЂњtoo muchвЂќ, but you can be rendered immobile by the sheer scale of the work that lies ahead. The necessary optimism that keeps the political self moving feels almost impossible if you are painfully, obsessively aware of every social ill that needs amending. What I have realised is, if you spend too much time zooming out, your vision blurs.

Just what were my politics, now I had no parliamentary anchor? What did I actually believe in? I wanted things to get вЂњbetterвЂќ вЂ“ but what did that even mean? Where should I put all that hope if I didnвЂ™t want it to curdle into apathy and nihilism?

With the slow erosion of that aspect of my political identity came a crisis in optimism вЂ“ and the beginning of an internal interrogation that would force the formation of my own opinions, rather than just following what sounded about right. Later, it was with all the blazing passion and fierce hope that a 21-year-old can muster. At first it was hereditary, as those early political forays often are. Previously, I was a Labour supporter, automatically, since I had been old enough to understand the basics of the two-party system. I am one of them: I hold no membership or allegiance to any party.

As of 2018, only 9% of the electorate вЂњvery strongly identifiedвЂќ with a political party, compared with nearly half of the same demographic in the 1960s. Partisan dealignment means the number of people who once strongly identified with a political party has declined. Since 2001, voter turnout for general elections has remained consistently lower than in any held since 1918. In 1944, only 35% of Britons viewed political representatives as вЂњout for themselvesвЂќ in 2021, research by the Institute for Public Policy Research found that 63% of British people now held this view. Trust in politicians has sunk to its lowest rate on record. Marked atrophy in our quality of life and crumbling anchor institutions вЂ“ local government, higher education, the NHS вЂ“ have contributed to increasing disillusionment in the ability of party politics to create change. In real-world terms, incomes have remained stagnant or shrunk, while the cost of living вЂ“ or more accurately, the cost of just-about-surviving вЂ“ has shot up thanks to a steep rise in just about every basic outgoing. Cut through the governmentвЂ™s protestations about increases in public spending and look at the reality: for millions of people, standards of living are the worst they have been. In-work poverty has risen to record highs nearly one in five children in poverty live in a household where all adults are working. During my lifetime, material conditions for Britons have measurably degraded. Unquestionably, вЂњbetterвЂќ has not come to pass. Back then, I invested my hopefulness in mass political movements, believing that with the right chord-striking campaign вЂ“ or even party leader вЂ“ the country would be mobilised and sweeping, vaguely defined change would follow. But it felt the most accurate way of characterising an outlook that was always prepared for the worst, but able to bear it because things, one day, might get вЂњbetterвЂќ. A past version of me described herself politically as a вЂњpessimistic optimistвЂќ.

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