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From cutting student loans to stopping small boats, Reform UK used its 2026 conference to tell Britain what its first 100 days in government could look like. But behind the pledges, protests and political drama, what did the conference actually mean for Gen Z?
If there was one message Reform UK wanted people to leave Birmingham with, it was this: we are preparing for government.
Its 2026 annual conference at Birmingham’s NEC was built around “The First 100 Days” – a series of promises for what a Reform government says it would do immediately after entering Downing Street.
And while immigration inevitably dominated parts of the conversation, some of the most significant announcements were aimed directly at issues affecting young people: university, student finance, apprenticeships, employment and the growing number of young people outside education or work.
Fewer degrees, more apprenticeships
Perhaps the most immediately relevant announcement for Gen Z came from Reform’s education spokesperson, Suella Braverman.
Braverman pledged to cut student-loan issuance by 20 per cent, which Reform argues would reduce funding for degrees it considers to be offering poor economic returns and redirect resources towards skills and apprenticeships.
She also pledged to remove the cap on places for UK medical students and introduce zero-interest student loans for British nursing students. Reform says its broader university reforms would cut approximately £4 billion from annual student-loan spending.
It taps into a question increasingly familiar to Gen Z: is university still worth it?
Young people have spent years being told that university is the safest route towards social mobility, only to graduate into expensive housing, large student-loan balances and an increasingly uncertain graduate job market.
But cutting access to university raises another question entirely: who gets to decide which degrees are valuable?
Universities have pushed back against Reform’s approach. The Financial Times reported that university leaders attending the conference attempted to make the economic case for higher education, while Reform figures continued to argue for substantial reductions in student-loan spending and a greater emphasis on alternatives to traditional degrees.
Reform wants to talk about young men
There was another distinctly Gen Z conversation happening in Birmingham: young men.
Conference discussions examined educational underachievement, youth unemployment and the number of young men who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).
One Friday fringe event, involving Movember and the Centre for Social Justice, specifically asked how Britain could get more young people into work.
It reflects a wider political shift.
For years, discussions about gender inequality have understandably focused heavily on the disadvantages experienced by women and girls. Increasingly, however, politicians are also debating why some groups of boys are falling behind educationally and why young men appear increasingly disengaged from traditional institutions.
Reform clearly sees that disillusionment as politically significant.
Whether its proposed solutions would actually address those inequalities is another question, but young men are becoming a constituency political parties are actively trying to understand.
