For those of us who had been attending protests for years, usually against austerity, this one felt different. It was exhilarating, and a far cry from the institutionally organised marches where we forced ourselves through the streets holding the prescribed banners and drearily chanting the prescribed slogans. At Millbank and in the weeks that followed, we were transformed into subjects with our own agency, and the chaos and uncertainty of those days was experienced as the opening of possibilities that extended beyond the protests themselves.

In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher wrote that, “the tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again,” and this felt like one such event. The next day, NUS President Aaron Porter wrote an article in the Sun in which he described the disorder as “despicable” and that sharpened our swords against the ranks of careerist New Labour bureaucrats (a look at his subsequent CV is dispiriting; this class is still disappointingly employable).

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Confessions of a student Marxist

By Tobias Phibbs

The leftist magazine Tribune describes Millbank as “one of the most important demonstrations in British political history”, striking a blow at “the nerve centre of the British establishment”. They are certainly right that it has taken on “mythic significance”, judging by the numbers who claim to have been there compared to the relatively small number of people who actually stormed the Tower.

For the few weeks following, protests and occupations spread over the country, culminating on December 9 when the bill was passed and we were kettled on Westminster Bridge until gone midnight. There was no food, no water, no toilet, and the rallying cries passed from joy, through defiance and anger, to desperation. As we were finally released into the night, including school-aged children hundreds of miles from home, we had to walk one-by-one through a tunnel of riot police shining a light on our faces and taking our photo. Any face coverings, worn to protect anonymity, were forcibly removed. We had lost, and the government and police had won. We had been humiliated and it felt like the end.

But it was not. Tribune argues, rather meekly, that Millbank’s legacy lives on through its participants: “Many took on important roles as trade unionists, climate activists, Palestine and Kurdish solidarity workers, disseminators of alternative media, organisers of migrant and refugee campaigns, and senior officials in the Labour Party.” This is another way of saying that Millbank did nothing but reproduce the ranks of the professionally ineffective Left. Tribune should be more ambitious: Millbank’s real significance was much more serious. Though we couldn’t see it at the time, it marked the emergence in politics of a class faction that was just coming into view and is even now transforming our country: the graduate without a future.

During the dead period of the noughties, protests stuck to a tried and tested formula. We would march through central London, before gathering in Trafalgar Square to hear from Left-wing veterans like Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn while Trotskyist parties competed to sell papers and sign up the uninitiated. It was all pretty harmless, an alternative to a trip to a National Trust property for a different subset of the middle classes.

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How Noël Coward made me a Marxist

By Paul Mason

There was the odd exception. A year before the Millbank protests, in Spring 2009, I remember skipping school and protesting against the G20 summit in London. A window was smashed and a police officer pushed a bystander, the newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, to his death. But this was on the way out; the tired tail-end of 1990s radicalism temporarily given a new lease of life by the recession, and it marked the last moment when the Left was defined by its opposition to globalisation. For the most part, rallies conformed to our cynical characterisation of them: not so much A to B, as A to Benn.

Millbank changed all that. We were no longer content to participate in ritualistic set pieces that achieved nothing. And it was also something new for many of its participants. This wasn’t another protest about Middle Eastern conflict, instead it related directly to our material conditions.

In the months and years that followed, a new class consciousness was born. Not among the idealised proletariat but among the immiserated sons and daughters of the middle class. Of this new set, the Deterritorial Support Group were the sharpest. They pranked the world media into believing Slavoj Žižek and Lady Gaga were close friends. They exposed Johann Hari’s plagiarism and accused him of “policing the boundaries of acceptable thought” and the liberal-left as representing the “left wing of capital.” One of their members explained to the Guardian that “without the specific historical and economic conditions I live under, I don’t feel I would be involved in this sort of thing.” Instead, he would “probably have a mortgage or something”. More often than not their agitprop stung because it was accurate.

And it spoke to the depths of our radicalisation and disillusionment with mainstream politics. The coalition government implemented the reforms but in truth they were coming even if New Labour had clung on in the 2010 general election. This was a bipartisan reform implemented by a generation who had paid nothing for their education. To top it off, the Liberal Democrats broke their pledge to oppose any increase in tuition fees. This had a prolonged effect on a generation’s trust in mainstream politics and Nick Clegg’s disappearance from the UK scene and new career as Silicon Valley executive can be understood as a form of exile – if not a particularly painful one.

Millbank was our year zero. Some of the DSG had voted for the Lib Dems in 2010, and one had even been a member. It was the disenchanted demographic to which they belonged that propelled Jeremy Corbyn to his leadership of the Labour Party and without it he may never have won in 2015. Instead it would have been Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham managing Labour’s decline.

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Does Labour understand why it lost?

By Graeme Archer

Yet 10 years on, the movement Millbank gave birth to has crumpled. Its predictions – that scrapping EMA and trebling university fees would put off poor kids from college and university respectively – have been proved wrong. The Left has descended into internecine conflict and the policing of individual behaviour. The collective joy and mutual self-interest of those early days has gone. There is a distinct irony that this radical energy was assimilated by the electoral project of Benn’s most loyal acolyte. With that comprehensively crushed in December and Jeremy Corbyn suspended from the party he led, it is hard to see how the fragments of the new Left can pick themselves up again.

The old Left is back to where it started, too, with a few thousand members spread across a few dozen organisations. Were it not for the coronavirus restrictions, I have no doubt that they would be organising their next ‘march against pandemic austerity’, the placards would be out calling for ‘the people’s vaccine’, and the paper sellers of the Socialist Workers’ Party would be setting up their stalls in Trafalgar Square in search of new recruits…

And yet, though the more interesting elements have dissipated, something has changed. The Left is formally defeated but it remains – in its cultural form – more influential than ever. Many of those radicalised at Millbank have graduated from higher education institutions and are reshaping our national political discourse. At the expense of a playful politics of collective self-interest, however, has come the importing and regurgitating of the life-draining successor ideology from the United States, an ideology which every power we claimed to be protesting against 10 years ago has embraced wholesale.

In 2010, we felt as though we were at the precipice of something real. History was re-emerging from its long slumber and it was finally possible once again to imagine radical futures, as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams attempted to do in the briefly influential Inventing the Future. Their book, published in 2015, seemed at the time like the beginning of a newly ambitious Left modernism. We can see now it marked the end of a short chapter. Today, the Left is shattered and poses no serious alternative to liberal, capitalist modernity. That challenge comes from the Right, while the Left is reduced to dragging cultural institutions ever further down the rabbit hole of intersectionality. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Any company would bend over backwards for such authentic, fun — and free — advertising; it reflects the Swedish finance firm Klarna’s growing Gen Z-centred customer base. Klarna has been operating in the UK since 2017 and has now linked up with more than 4,500 major retailers from H&M to J.D. Sports. This and other similar apps such as PayPal Credit, Clearpay, and Laybuy enable online customers to either delay or divide the payment across multiple weeks — without incurring interest.

These apps have been godsends for online shoppers during the pandemic because of the way they enable the consumer to purchase several items, try them and send unwanted ones back before they have officially paid for them. Shoppers are not caught up in the inconvenience of delayed reimbursement from retailers. It enables consumers to literally ‘try before they buy’ even when the shops are all shut.

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The truth about Gen Z

By Eliza Filby

One TikTok meme sees parcel after parcel pile up on a bed with the tag: “Klarna getting me through lockdown one ASOS package at a time.” This trend is real. The price comparison site comparethemarket.com found that 23% of Gen Z have turned to ‘buy now, pay later’ services during lockdown. While many of us are feeling rather smug about all the savings we are making during this enforced period of restrictive spending, some are experiencing the opposite: online spending sprees funded through delayed payment apps mean that they risk emerging out of lockdown with significant amounts of debt.

“Keep thinking I’m saving money in lockdown and then I remember my FAT klarna bill” tweets one customer. For a large proportion of this generation, whose status emanates from an ever-evolving visual identity through social media, lockdown has been a case of ‘you can’t change your location but you can change your clothes’. With Klarna the default payment option at the checkout on some sites, it’s easy to see why it is so alluring.

As a convenient, flexible alternative to store and credit cards, it appears to be a wholly benign form of debt. Problems can arise, however, if you miss a payment (which with bi-weekly instead of the usual monthly payments is all too easy). Klarna itself has estimated that consumers spend on average 55% more when they are given the option of delaying or paying over several weeks (without admitting that this may be money customers do not have). Email and text reminders are sent, but the account will be sent to a debt collection agency when customers fail to act. Klarna has said that it has clear T&Cs, a strict vetting process and responsive customer service but an investigation by The Daily Telegraph found that 30,000 customers have already had their credit damaged because of missed payments.

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Give everyone a debt holiday

By Phillip Blond

As debt services go, it would be wrong to put them in the same class as Wonga or BrightHouse (which, incidentally, folded during lockdown) but we are right to question their corporate responsibility when this service is so quick, easy and marketed chiefly at the young. With its millennial pink logo and its focus on social media influencers such as Love Island contestants, Klarna has successfully tapped into a tricky market that can often allude major retailers. Its recent campaign “Shop like a Queen” was a deliberate appeal to the LGBTQI community, sponsoring the former Ru Paul’s US Drag Race stars Katya Zamolodchikova and Trixie Mattel’s YouTube show UNHhhh.

But a generation that has had a smartphone in their palm since their early teens is wary of crude endorsements. One US viewer complained on Reddit that he was ‘disappointed’ to see UNHhhh “turn into an extended commercial for [a] credit scheme”. This generation, which grew up in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, also takes a sceptical view of investments, the stock market and established money lenders. According to the consultancy firm Cassandra, only 34% of Gen Z trust banks.

Gen Z are wired differently to millennials when it comes to consumption, debt and saving. Whereas millennials grew up in the boom years, Gen Z’s childhood (when your attitudes towards money are formulated) was defined by the crash, followed by austerity and sluggish recovery in the wake of the Brexit referendum. They watched their parents struggle and will now themselves experience the Corona Crash. They won’t able to rely on the bank of Mum and Dad in the same way that a significant number of millennials did.

They also grew up during the fintech revolution, during which automated payments and cashless transactions became the new normal, and the weight of coins in your pocket was an alien sensation. Add to that the era of fast-fashion, fast-consumption and you have a generation that is on the one hand much more prudent than millennials in valuing money, but also much more vulnerable when it comes to spending it.

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Will Gen Z recover from Covid?

By Matthew Goodwin

The combination of tech and tough times has made them more resourceful and more entrepreneurial — a number generate their own money from a younger age. They are also savvy shoppers to whom price comparison is second nature, while their ethical credentials and fashion-conscious aesthetic has triggered a revolution in the second-hand clothes market which rivals that of fast-fashion. Depop, a buying and selling app, has experienced a 90% increase in traffic since 1 April.

There are signs that they are more inclined to save than millennials too. When HSBC ran a survey asking Gen Z and millennials what they would do with £1,000 cash, 72% of Gen Z (compared with 55% of millennials) said they would put it into a savings account. The challenger bank Monzo, an app-only bank whose card is now a staple in every Gen Z wallet, catered for the new banking priorities of young people post-Crash who wanted greater control over their finances through its spending notifications and saving pot features. It also recently signed a deal with the saving app Emma, which it plans to launch for those as young as 11.

Generation Z may see the benefits of saving, but they also have a more relaxed attitude towards spending and debt. Student loans have normalised debt for the young but not given them the skills to manage it. Debt, of any kind, has been made to feel inconsequential. As one commented on TikTok responding to a #GoHard Klarna video: “I have a debt collection agency after me for a £15 ASOS order” — complete with a laughing emoji. The social shame of living on the never-never, common up until the 1980s, is not something that bothers this generation.

Nor perhaps does the prospect of insolvency. Bankruptcy claims among the young have increased tenfold in three years: under-25s now account for 6.5% of all cases, according to the accountancy firm RSM. One debt advice company estimated that this demographic represented 14% of all clients in 2018, with an average debt of £6,000. A study found that 18% of 18-24-year-olds use their credit card for bills and essentials.

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Who gains from the great university scam?

By Mary Harrington

The success of these apps also lies in the fact that Generation Z, more than any other generation, has been conditioned to the ‘one-click’ transaction. Apps such as Klarna do not just encourage the “I want it now” urge but also normalise the frictionless buying experience. This was pioneered by Amazon and Apple but in the case of Klarna, is financed through debt.

The move to a cashless society has meant that all ages have experienced a growing detachment and responsibility from the transaction — the psychological difference between a couple of clicks online and physically handing over cash. This becomes problematic when it is a debt-based transaction by someone young, financially vulnerable, used to one-click credit and with an easy attitude towards debt. Parents have been talking to their kids about the perilous nature of social interactions online; it could be that they also need to start educating them on the perilous nature of financial transactions online too.

But beware lecturing the young on money. The days of delayed gratification are long gone for most of us. Generation Z are no more consumerist than their parents, and certainly more financially inventive, informed and resourceful than millennials. Some responsibility must lie with companies themselves in providing full transparency of terms, thorough checks on vulnerable customers and a genuine commitment to responsible debt control. The debt industry will always work out new methods to lure consumers and for the majority, debt is convenient and, if managed, perfectly sound financial behaviour. But we are facing a fierce financial headwind that has already disproportionately impacted the young.

One bruised Klarna customer on Reddit offered a solution: “Saving seems to be an act of resistance.” To Gen Z, a savvy, activist generation, recalibrating shrewd financial behaviour into a political act might just gain traction.