Article

Culture

Education

Politics

26 February 2025

6 min read

Does Gen Z crave the dictator?

If young Brits are turning away from democracy, here’s how to stop it.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A cat with a small black moustache marking snarls while sitting in front of a tablet.

Kanashi on Unsplash

I knew something was seriously wrong when I hosted a live interactive online assembly for a couple of thousand sixth formers last year. Given a range of emojis the one that was chosen most to represent how they felt about politics wasn’t a thumbs up, or sleeping face, - it was the pile of poo emoji. The vast majority also expressed a deep distrust in government believing they neither listened to nor cared about them. It was then that I realised democracy was in trouble—and not just on the global stage. Here in the UK, a deeply worrying trend is emerging: more than half of Generation Z (those aged 13-27) believe the country would be better off under a dictator.

Recent controversial polling from Craft, commissioned by Channel 4, reveals that 52 per cent of Gen Z believe the UK should be run by a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections. Even more alarmingly, 33 per cent think the country would be better off if the army were in charge. If that doesn’t make us sit up and take notice, consider this: nearly half (47 per cent) of Gen Z believe our society must be radically changed through revolution.

These numbers are staggering. For those of us who have grown up with a strong commitment to democracy, it is unthinkable that the generation raised with the most freedom, the most access to information, and the greatest digital connectivity could be so willing to give up their right to vote, protest, and hold leaders accountable. But before we rush to condemn, we need to ask the hard question: why do so many young people apparently feel this way?

A lost faith in politics

What if it isn’t so much that Gen Z has turned against democracy, but that they feel democracy has turned against them? Think about it. Their schools are crumbling. Their teachers are stressed. If they need mental health support or special needs support, they have either a long wait or a hard fight on their hands and probably both. If they want to go to university, they have to take on a debt that will last longer than the time they have been alive. And pity help them if they want to buy a house - statistics suggest they will probably have to wait until they are 33 years old to even think about getting onto the property ladder.

You might think that these struggles would force Gen Z to become more politically active. But this generation remains the least politically engaged group in the UK. Whilst it is true that currently many are too young to vote, there is also a large proportion who is too disconnected to see the relevance of formal politics. Voter turnout for young people has been abysmal in the last three UK general elections:

2015: 43 per cent
2017: 54 per cent (a temporary spike due to Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal)
2019: 47 per cent

Compare that to the 70 per cent plus turnout for over-65s, and the message is clear: young people aren’t voting, and in return, politicians aren’t speaking to them. Which only exacerbates the problem. Despite the Labour Party manifesto promise that they would introduce voting at 16, they seem to be in no hurry to introduce the reform.

While Gen Z engagement with traditional politics is low, their political leanings have shifted. Over the past two decades, Gen Z has moved slightly to the centre-left, while older generations tend to lean centre-right. Today, age is a stronger predictor of voting behaviour than social class, which is a dramatic shift from previous decades. Though Gen Z is more liberal overall, they are also more radical in their discontent—and that’s where the real danger lies.

When young people feel unheard, they don’t just disengage—they seek alternatives. Their frustration has left them susceptible to radical ideas and strongman narratives. While previous generations turned to grassroots activism, protests, and community engagement, Gen Z is more likely to be influenced by leaders they can follow online - like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Nigel Farage, who offer clear, confident, and often extreme critiques of the system.

The result? Despite strong examples in the positive activism of Greta Thunberg, Marcus Rashford and Malala who have used democratic means to make a positive difference, there is a growing number of young people who see democracy as weak and ineffective, and dictatorship as strong and decisive.

A wake-up call

But there is hope. By engaging young people directly there is an opportunity to change the trajectory. That’s what we discovered at our online interactive event for sixth formers. One of the most powerful voices at the event was Sophia, a recently turned 18-year-old Ukrainian refugee, who spoke about her experience fleeing war. She told her story of being separated from her father who was in Ukraine fighting for democracy. She shared how Ukrainians are fighting—not just with weapons, but with their lives—for the very democracy that young Brits are so ready to discard. Her message to British students was simple: “You don’t know how lucky you are.” She challenged them to see democracy not as a broken system, but as one that requires their participation to work.

It was a powerful moment. And it proved something vital: when young people hear real stories, from real people, they begin to see the consequences of the choices they are flirting with. As a result of that event, thousands of young people signed up to vote at the electoral commission.

Rebuilding trust in democracy

So what can be done? Here are three crucial steps.

Make politics relevant to Gen Z. Young people do care about issues like climate change, mental health, and social justice. But they are turned off democratic political solutions by the bureaucracy, mud-flinging and dragging timescales. By taking time to explain to them the processes, to involve them in the campaigns and to improve accessibility to politics and highlight the difference they can make, we may find that our most disconnected demographic could become democracy’s greatest asset.

Rebuild Gen Z’s trust in leadership. Scandals and dishonesty have left Gen Z cynical. We need leaders who are transparent, accountable, and willing to listen. We need parties who will do what they said they would do in their manifestos and on the doorsteps. We need Members of Parliament who are committed to spending time with the young people they are supposed to represent so that relationships of trust can be deemed possible again.

Empower Gen Z. There are initiatives out there—like our interactive live assembly and the G-EPIC project—that prove a simple truth: when young people feel heard, they engage. When they are inspired, they engage. When they are empowered to participate in the political process, they engage. Perhaps if we create more spaces for them to speak, lead, and act, they will step forward to shape the future.

History shows that democracy is never guaranteed—it must be fought for and protected by every generation. It also requires constant effort to ensure it serves all communities without scapegoating, persecuting, or marginalizing. And history warns us that without democracy, most dictators quickly become tyrants.

The challenge before us is urgent: we must help Generation Z recognize the power they hold to shape their world—before they surrender it to leaders who would take that power away from all of us.

Join with us - Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what I’m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief

Find out more and sign up

Article

Comment

Leading

Psychology

Theatre

21 October 2025

6 min read

Are you a narcissist?

We all have a little bit of narcissism in us – the question is whether we’re a Moses or an Iago

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

An Elizabethan man holds a dagger up while grinning.

Kenneth Brannagh's Iago in the 1995 film of Othello.

Sony Pictures.

Is everyone a narcissist these days? It sometimes feels so. Google Trends data shows an eleven-fold increase in searches for “narcissism” between 2010 and 2023, and the term has become a social media buzzword. Online quizzes asking, “Am I a narcissist?” are everywhere, offering dubious self-diagnosis at the click of a button. Genuine Narcissistic Personality Disorder, however, is complex and painful – especially for those in close relationships with someone who cannot acknowledge the harm that they are able to cause or feel any sense of remorse. Narcissus, in Greek mythology, was a handsome young man who was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection, but it was not until the early 20th century that the term “narcissism” was then picked up by the emerging field of psychoanalysis. Initially, Sigmund Freud adopted it in a non-pejorative way to describe the stage in child development when an infant is aware only of their own need for love and attention. Eventually, as that infant grows into a child it begins to experiment with showing others love and attention, and if surrounded by the right relationships, the child learns that love can be reciprocal – a back-and-forth pattern of give and take. Freud wrote:

“Loving, then, contributes to the lowering of self‑regard. Having one’s love returned, however, restores one’s self‑regard and replenishes one’s narcissism.”

In its healthiest form, narcissism reflects a positive sense of self – a recognition of one’s own needs and a reasonable desire for them to be met, whilst also knowing that we must give of ourselves, again within reason, to meet the needs of others. In this sense, yes, we are all a little bit of a narcissist. It is only occasionally, most commonly when the early bond between a child and their caregivers is inconsistent or unstable, that this self-focus can become problematically distorted, sometimes leading to a personality disorder. For such a person, a constant hunger for attention and affirmation, often combined with a lack of empathy or a tendency to use empathy as a means to manipulate others, leads to a life of take-take-take; one which can cause significant harm to others and ultimately to themselves.

Estimates for Narcissistic Personality Disorder are that it affects about one to two per cent of the population, a number which is intriguingly high. The unfortunate news is that true Narcissistic Personality Disorder is notoriously difficult to treat, precisely because key tenets of the condition include a lack of self-awareness and an overinflated sense of self belief. The classic response of the one with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is, of course, “How dare my therapist say that I am a narcissist? They must be the problem!”

However, much more prevalent are what might be called “sub-clinical narcissists” – people who act selfishly, arrogantly, or manipulatively, influencing others to conform to their desires. We all know one or more of those – sometimes we meet one when we look in the mirror. Whilst this may make us feel pretty rotten, whether we are the giver or the receiver of such treatment, it does not always warrant a clinical intervention. Even so, it can still be extremely difficult to process how and why human narcissistic tendencies are able to cause others so much pain. If, as Freud proposes, a certain degree of narcissism is hardwired into human nature, what can we do about its tendency to evil?

In Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, the character of Iago is a master manipulator who displays all the cold-hearted indifference of a true narcissist. Early in Act 1 he expresses his indignation that he has been passed over for promotion. Firmly convinced of his own superiority, he slyly boasts that he will play a false self to Othello, feigning loyalty for his own ends and stating: “I am not what I am.”

These words are a clever and rather chilling inversion of a famous phrase from the Bible. In the story of the Exodus, God meets with Moses in the form of a burning bush, and when Moses asks for the name of God a voice replies: “I am what I am.” As Moses stands before God, barefoot and awestruck, he hears that enigmatic statement and is forced to confront the question of who he truly is – an ashamed murderer, a fugitive, a short-tempered man of slow speech but hasty acts. Moses acknowledges all these awkward truths about himself and declares himself wholly unfit to be called by God as a leader. Yet God uses Moses anyway, and at the end of his life, Moses dies a celebrated hero – a deliverer who is mourned by all his people.

Not so Iago. As the tale of Othello draws to its tragic close, Iago is wounded, arrested and escorted from the stage. The audience knows that he has been condemned to execution, but unlike pretty much every other character in that fateful final scene, Iago’s death does not take place onstage. He is simply removed, dismissed from everybody’s notice – a narcissist’s worst nightmare.

One can see the crucial difference between Moses and Iago – whilst Moses is concerned that his own flawed nature makes him unfit to be become a great leader, Iago is driven to grasp at leadership by a belief in his own grandiosity and acts vengefully when passed over. Right to the end, Iago expresses not one word of self-doubt or regret for his actions. Indeed, he refuses to account for himself at all. “Demand me nothing,” he says at the close; “What you know, you know.”

Seemingly, the problem of narcissism’s tendency towards evil lies not in actions, but in methods of self-evaluation. While we all make regrettable mistakes, and sometimes it can be hard to judge the difference between unreasonable selfishness and reasonable self-preservation, the true narcissist is afraid to explain themselves, unwilling to bear the judgement of outside scrutiny. The narcissist will look only in the mirror.

But whereas a mirror only reflects light, a burning bush produces it. In the end, the resources of the Christian tradition do not simply diagnose our narcissism, they offer us a way through it. They offer an outside perspective from which we can truly evaluate our own actions – a light that shines through the mirror.

If you have ever clicked the link for the online quiz, or been tempted to, then that is an encouraging sign of willingness to be open to outside scrutiny. But of all things, would we really want to trust only human voices, especially the unknown and unknowable voices of the internet, as an authoritative arbiter? If narcissism is so inherent to human nature, it logically takes something higher and brighter than our fellow human beings to really bring it into the light. But in any case, you can save yourself the time of completing that dubious online diagnostic quiz since the whole enterprise can be summed up in just one question:

Have you ever wondered if you have Narcissistic Personality Disorder? If the answer is yes, you probably do not. So demand yourself nothing, what you know you know.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Pledge your gift now