Politics has left gen Z screaming into the void.

At least Hezza is offering us hope

- Shuab Gamote

He walked slowly to the lectern, one hand on the rail, the other behind his back.

A 92-year-old Lord Heseltine at London's Ministry of Sound isn't an image you expect to see. But there he was at the Next Gen 2025 conference, the country's biggest youth politics event, a Tory grandee in a nightclub famous for its basslines.

He didn't do the usual throat-clearing. No jokes about being the oldest person in the room. He spoke about Britain. The Commonwealth.

The room was silent. At first, I thought he had lost the memo, but he kept going. He spoke about a country that once set its sights outward and refused to be small. About Europe as a project that once gave us purpose.

I watched from the balcony as, one by one, gen Zers lifted their phones to record his speech, each silent nod of approval captured in the glow of their screens. When he finished, the applause was among the loudest of the day.

Earlier, Zack Polanski did what the Green party of England and Wales increasingly excels at: he offered a picture of power flowing down to young people, not just promises of consultations. It landed. He told the room his party had more than 110,000 members, just a few dozen short of the Conservatives' estimated 120,000, and has since said his party has now passed them. The Tories were represented by a former deputy prime minister, the Greens sent their party leader and Labour sent its youngest MP. I will leave you to guess what message that sent.