Patriotism is considered provincial
Should we get there, it’s strange to imagine Gen Z in our twilight years. Will our women, scraggly stick-and-poke tattoos blooming over wrinkled arms, still call each other “diva” in their knitting circles? Will the men, swapping gurning to EDM for glacial aquarobics sessions in the local leisure centre, still have their mullets? Will everyone die from vaping at 50?
And, most unknowably, will we import our globalised, post-MeToo, post-BLM politics into the 2070s and beyond? I suspect not. The newest crop of pensioners, who came of age in the late Seventies and early Eighties, was as ever far more likely to vote Conservative than their younger compatriots in last year’s general election. Though each successive wave of bus-pass-holders is likely to be more tolerant — or less baffled, at least — on social issues, the inevitable slide Right is a product of shifting priorities, towards pensions, winter-fuel payments and the ability to secure a doctor’s appointment. Gen Z will not be an exception: a cynical view is that the politics of self-interest always supersede voguish causes, such as quibbling over the definitions of identity, as one heads towards the Stannah stairlift.
