Boys don’t read – And Farage doesn’t want them to

Young men are far more likely than women to vote for Reform, and they are also far less likely to read than their female peers. This is not a coincidence.

Statistics show that young men are far more likely to vote for Reform UK than young women, with 35% of 17-year-old boys saying they would vote for Reform if they had the chance, compared to only 12% of 17-year-old girls. Similarly, 12% of 18–24-year-old men voted Reform in 2024 while only 6% of 18–24-year-old women reported doing so.

Statistics also show that women are far more likely to read than men, with 66% of women saying they read or listened to a book in the past year compared to 53% of men. Young people are especially unlikely to read, with only 53% of 18–24-year-olds saying that they have read or listened to a book in the last year.

How is this related? Well, Reform UK is a far-right populist party with politics in a similar vein to that of Donald Trump in the USA, in the sense that it likes to create nationalist narratives blaming immigration and the loss of tradition for economic turmoil. It misrepresents facts, statistics, and events to create simple, easy-to-follow narratives blaming one specific group of people for the issues that their nation faces.

Young people in the UK are feeling the economic effects of decades of mismanagement and austerity from their elders in power

For example, Farage said in 2023 to the editor of The Spectator: “The reason there is a housing crisis is mass immigration. The reason they can’t get a GP appointment is mass immigration.” Farage says things like this in order to whip up support and anger rather than to try and tell people the truth, because that benefits him more than admitting the more complex reasons: that years of austerity measures and underfunding have left GPs unable to keep up with their appointment backlog.

Meanwhile, young people in the UK are feeling the economic effects of decades of mismanagement and austerity from their elders in power, with 48% of Gen Zs surveyed by Deloitte saying they do not feel financially secure and 41% saying they worry that they won’t be able to retire with financial comfort.

It makes sense, then, that some young people are looking for a scapegoat to blame for these issues, and people like Farage and Trump are able to tap into this by saying that rising, uncontrolled immigration is the problem. However, not everyone believes this, so why are certain people more susceptible?

Whatever limits you think we should put on immigration, it is not the largest problem this country faces, and it is not the reason that you can’t get a house or a doctor’s appointment

Simply put, it is because reading and education will always be extremely important. Reading allows us to empathise with others from different walks of life and to put ourselves in their shoes in a way that no other form of media truly can. Beyond this, having a good education in humanities and sciences alike improves our critical thinking skills and ability to question everything. There is a reason Donald Trump famously said “I love the poorly educated”: they are less likely to contest what he says.

Both of these things are invaluable to fight back against populism, because empathising with others allows us to see refugees as more than an invisible enemy or invader, and instead as people who have come to this country to flee war or poverty and who dream of a better life for their children. Critical thinking skills allow us to examine how large of a problem immigration really is, and make us realise that whatever limits you think we should put on immigration, it is not the largest problem this country faces, and it is not the reason that you can’t get a house or a doctor’s appointment.

The fact that women read more than men and younger generations are less likely to read than those before them can then be linked to more and more young men, who are angry about the state of their country, taking the poisonous words of Farage at face value and growing to hate the invisible enemy of immigrants who they may never meet or understand.

Only by changing our media and explaining to boys the importance of their education and reading in new ways can we overcome this stigma and stop many of them from believing the lies of Reform

So, what can we do to change this? The best weapon we have against hateful, dishonest politicians is an educated, free-thinking society. Beyond the incredibly important fact that we need to improve funding for schools in our country, the reason young boys in particular have worse educational achievement and lower levels of reading is because of gender and social norms.

According to Judy Chu of Stanford University, because of how masculinity is often depicted in society and the media, men are less likely to ask for help or show curiosity in school, and feel that they are supposed to be indifferent to academics and instead focused on business or sport. Only by changing our media and explaining to boys the importance of their education and reading in new ways can we overcome this stigma and stop many of them from believing the lies of Reform.