THE kids are not all right. In fact, while it has been the oldest in our society who have suffered the most during the pandemic in terms of ill health, it has been our youth who have had their futures stolen and have been unfairly blamed.  

This urgently needs addressing, but this doesn’t mean we should resort to an inter-generational conflict which aims to sacrifice older people.

The A-levels catastrophe was just the start of the misery unleashed upon our young.  

It was followed by the most severe restrictions placed upon students — some of whom have been locked down in their halls with people that they have only just met.

The promise of a mix of online and face-to-face learning was something that neither the government nor universities could ever realistically deliver on, and thousands of young people face a combination of social isolation and debt for which they will receive little in return.  

What exactly are our students racking up this debt for? The class of 2020 might have well signed up for distance learning courses.

More people go to university than ever before and, although this is not the best route for everyone and certainly is no indication of a person’s intellectual capacity or societal worth, this is to be celebrated.  

However, it is perhaps difficult for some people to realise that being an undergraduate student is about much more than formal academic education.  

Student life is also about being away from home for the first time; escaping your parents; making the mistakes that will teach you vital lessons; and learning to be a responsible adult.  

It is about meeting new people; diversifying your friendship groups; and, yes, widening your horizons (although ways of widening your horizons outside of university are available).  

This was never going to be the case during the Covid-19 pandemic, and if the government and universities did not realise this then they were unbelievably short-sighted.  

Students didn’t sign up to be confined to their quarters by private security guards.

The press went wild with images of young people partying in the streets once the pubs have closed at 10pm. Attacking the apparent selfishness of these kids: “How dare they have fun while we exist in some kind of half-lockdown semi-life?”

But what do we expect? The Tory government has been telling us all summer that we should “learn to live without fear”; they’ve been telling us to “eat out to help out” and that we should all return to our offices.

Even now as the second wave begins to engulf us, the government refuses Sage’s suggestion of a “circuit-breaker” and denies adequate financial support to communities in northern England as they enter Tier 3. Talk about mixed messages!

Young people will always challenge the rules (in some ways it’s their role to keep us on our toes).  

However, I believe that this new generation has a social conscience. It is a social conscience which is not shared by those in authority — particularly Tory ministers who see the pandemic as an opportunity to enrich their friends through the awarding of million-pound contracts.  

Most young people are acutely aware of the scientific facts which underpin the severe curtailing of their everyday lives.  

They are certainly more aware than the libertarian right who would see thousands of elderly people become unwell to achieve some mythical “herd immunity.”  

Yet it is the young who are blamed, not the hard-right libertarian cranks who compel government inaction and spread misinformation.

And it’s not just undergraduates. School pupils also suffer. On top of the regime of unrelenting assessment, children also now have to contend with the uncertainty of whether their education even continues at all.  

These kids are aware that at any minute their year group may be sent home to self-isolate and their education be effectively put on hold.  

They are also aware that they could be an asymptomatic carrier of a disease which may serious affect — or even kill — their relatives. 

Once young people have left education it will not get any better. Figures released by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Welfare at a Distance project show an increase in the number of young people now claiming benefits.  

With the closure of pubs and entertainment venues, it is again young people who are disproportionately affected (along with the over-50s).  

It is absolutely essential that these young people receive financial support and are provided with the education and training opportunities necessary to provide them with a future once this crisis is over.

The answer to all this isn’t to pit generations against one another. That was tried during the Brexit debate with the divisive “they stole our future” line which led to some people almost willing older people to die off so they could win a second referendum.  

The answer simply isn’t to rescue the young at the expense of the old. We have to recognise that we are all in this together — as a class.

The younger generation is highly alert to inequality, climate chaos and racial injustice — they won’t go for some inter-generation conflict which sees them prosper at the expense older people.

The answer has to be response by the state which put human life first and recognises that defeating this virus relies on the kind of social solidarity which shuns inter-generational conflict, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment or whatever divisions the government seeks to exploit.  

Unfortunately, this is not the response pursued by the Tories who seek to blame everyone other than themselves for their failures to suppress Covid-19.  

Instead they have wasted the summer by outsourcing the response to coronavirus to their friends and big businesses who seek to make a profit from human misery.

The youth are our future. They might make mistakes (I made plenty of mistakes when I was young). They may challenge the rules (challenging the rules is healthy).  

But they are our future and, as generations go, it appears to this 40-year-old that they are more socially aware and empathetic than the right-wing press will ever give them credit for.  

Let’s keep them in mind as we work our way out of this crisis. The kids are all right.