Europe’s Right-Wing Parties Can’t Afford to Neglect Young People

This week, Reform UK, the insurgent right-wing party that continues to maintain a decisive lead in opinion polling ahead of Britain’s next general election, pledged that, if elected, it would oppose any adjustments to the country’s state pension system. Announcing that Reform would leave intact Britain’s “triple-lock” guarantee — the longstanding commitment that state pension payments will increase annually by whichever is the greatest of the annual inflation rate, average earnings growth, or 2.5 percent — Reform leader and odds-on prime ministerial favorite Nigel Farage argued that “[t]he people to whom pensions are being paid, in vast majority, certainly compared to a younger generation today, are those that have actually worked and paid into the system.”

Farage and Robert Jenrick, the party’s spokesman for economic affairs, asserted that the fiscally unsustainable (particularly given Britain’s bleak economic trajectory) triple-lock guarantee could be preserved through a combination of slashing foreign aid, cutting funds spent on housing illegal migrants, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in public benefits spending.

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Matthew X. Wilson

Matthew X. Wilson is a former associate editor at National Review.

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This week, Reform UK, the insurgent right-wing party that continues to maintain a decisive lead in opinion polling ahead of Britain’s next general election, pledged that, if elected, it would oppose any adjustments to the country’s state pension system. Announcing that Reform would leave intact Britain’s “triple-lock” guarantee — the longstanding commitment that state pension payments will increase annually by whichever is the greatest of the annual inflation rate, average earnings growth, or 2.5 percent — Reform leader and odds-on prime ministerial favorite Nigel Farage argued that “[t]he people to whom pensions are being paid, in vast majority, certainly compared to a younger generation today, are those that have actually worked and paid into the system.”

Farage and Robert Jenrick, the party’s spokesman for economic affairs, asserted that the fiscally unsustainable (particularly given Britain’s bleak economic trajectory) triple-lock guarantee could be preserved through a combination of slashing foreign aid, cutting funds spent on housing illegal migrants, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in public benefits spending.