What’s everyone’s thoughts? Good idea? I don’t really see the point I honestly don’t think most 16 year olds can make an informed decision either way I would expect the turnout to be less than 20%. Should it only be for those working?
Voting age to be reduced to 16
by 111 Comments
I agree that most people that age can’t make an informed decision. Having said that they’re unlikely to vote for Farridge, and as he scooped up the disaffected geriatric vote perhaps age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom.
I am sure that’s part of the calculation as far as the government is concerned However, the young white working class men I work with in retail ( one of whom has only just turned 18) are entirely likely to vote for Reform. I suspect the same is true of some of the children at the school where I also work. The outcome may yet prove to be more mixed than the government thinks, particularly outside of the metropolitan areas.
How depressing. The Farridge Youth movement is only a whisker away. Jackboots in the playground, Elon Musk salutes in assembly.
Surely the answer is to understand why and do something about it rather than disenfranchise them. The main reason people voted for Trump was because they felt listened to.
The operative word is ‘felt’ I believe some of them are beginning to doubt trump.
Yes it seems so. Over Epstein in fact.
FWIW, YouGov 18-24 Voting Intention:
Labour 28%
Greens 26%
Lib Dems 20%
Tories 9%
Reform 6%
Reform currently polling at 27% vs 22% for Labour
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/voting-intention
Yes, but that’s for all adults.
Sorry, I should have been clearer above: 18-24 is the youngest polling bracket (you can select it on your link), and therefore our best indicator at the moment as to how 16 and 17 year olds might actually vote.
On the available evidence, they appear less likely to vote for Reform.
Apols. My mistake
Given the de facto extension of childhood during my lifetime, I think one could probably make a stronger case for putting the voting age back up to 21 than reducing it to 16. In any event, it seems inconsistent to allow 16 year olds to help decide who should run the country and have influence over other people, when they are not allowed to make a whole range of decisions and choices in theory own lives because they are deemed too young.
I agree entirely. The age should be going up, not down. I wouldn’t trust my grandson to make a decision about which socks to put on, let alone who to vote for. Sadly, he’s already 18…
By that logic, there should be a mental competency test and/or age cap for older people.
I said at the time of the Brexit Referendum that there should be an age cap on those allowed to vote as a significant number had their say in the 1970s and they were now beyond working age so much less affected by the outcome.
Everyone in one way or another is affected by the outcome of elections irrespective of their age, working status, gender, class, colour or creed. If extending the right to vote to younger folk helps to dilute the unfair advantage us older folk hold then I’m all in favour of it. You don’t make a society more democratic by extending enfranchisement to one section of the population and then remove it at the other end of the age scale just because some of those people vote in a way that others don’t like. I voted remain. I’m Sixty nine. I first exercised my democratic right to a vote in 1975 at the first referendum on Europe. I voted remain that time too.
Well said that man.
Does a sixteen year old in gainful employment pay income tax? I assume they do if their earnings exceed the threshold. Putting aside any assumptions about the mental acuity of people at any given age as there are arseholes sprinkled liberally throughout the age groups it seems to me that there shouldn’t be taxation without representation. So either give them the vote or take them out of tax.
I agree. Just so many arseholes and so mnay of them mature enough to know better.
I agree with pencilsqueezer. It’s never been clear to me how a 16 year old can be asked to pay tax without being extended the right to vote.
That said, if the last few years have taught us anything it’s that well-intentioned, theoretically sound political ideas such as this one have a tendency to detonate right in our stupid faces, so my expectation is we’ll probably end up regretting it.
According to the ONS, about 1.7% of 16-17 year olds are in regular employment, i.e not in education or training. Rather more presumably have seasonal or very part-time jobs. I suspect that few, if any, pay Income Tax, given the minimum wage rates for 16-17 year olds and the limited hours most will work.
Sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that income tax rules apply to them, just as they do to all other voters. Taxation and representation should kick in at the same age – regardless of how much actual tax gets paid, or (on the flip side) how many of them are likely to turn out to vote.
Yes.
I’m retired now, since 2016, and now pay no income tax. Like most others employed or not, I pay VAT, petrol tax and all of the other taxes.
I’m a pensioner now too and I pay income tax along with all the other taxes I’m obliged to pay. I’m happy to do so. I want to live in a decent compassionate nation that has properly funded public services that are for the benefit of all. All those services have to be paid for, I’m delighted I’m in a position to be able to contribute to that.
That would also mean giving the vote to anyone who paid Income Tax, which will include children far younger than 16. Fair enough.
In any event, I am not particulalry bothered whether or not the franchise is extended to 16 year olds. It just seems odd that they will still be precluded form doing any number of things ( drinking, getting a tattoo, most forms of gambling). and are treated differently in the criminal justice system. Schools even have to get parental agreement for relatively trivial things.
A decent point raised there.
To be entitled to vote and yet still be treated as Minors in certain other contexts is going to be a bit bizarre.
Surprisingly (worryingly?) high level of support for Farage/Reform amongst younger voters.
Like others here, not 100% sure if 16 y.o.s have the mental acuity to make informed decisions. That said, they’re old enough to join the armed forces and get killed in defence of the country.
I don’t really buy this mental acuity thing.
There must be a ton of people at the other end of life with declining mental acuity, but we don’t take the vote away from them. In between, there are presumably a ton of people who are very stupid indeed, and they get to vote too. Having a working brain is clearly no barrier to voting in an election, or even standing in one, frankly.
I’m not even sure I see the evidence of a lack of mental acuity in 16 year olds – most of them are coming off several months of exams and revision, so their brains are generally in pretty decent working order. What they lack is real world experience and probably a bit of maturity, but – hey – I’m not going to point the finger on that latter, and our MPs aren’t in much of a position to point the finger on the former.
Personally, I tend to think that if you’re old enough to procreate, pay taxes and fight a war then you’re old enough to vote. In theory at least.
Under 18s cannot be deployed to fight.
There are loads of voters with declining mental acuity. How else do you explain what happened in Clacton?
Or ahem Brexit.
They can go in the forces and be killed serving the country as well as paying tax and until recently could get married (but can still have sex). It is ridiculous not allowing them to vote. It might wake politicians up to things like our terrible youth services, under equipped schools, facilities for young people. In my experience young people have pretty strong opinions about most things and a strong sense of right and wrong which can only be a good thing. The idea that they are too inexperienced to make sound judgements goes out of the window when we look at the demographic who voted for Brexit.
This
Recruitment begins at 16 but the minimum age for front line duty is 18.
Another vote in favour from me – as mentioned above, they pay taxes and so should have a say in how they are used.
Here in Singapore the voting age is still 21 – they claim it’s about “maturity” but the general feeling is that as all boys have to do 2 years National Service at 18 and that is generally reluctantly, if the voting age was 18, they would lose that proportion of the vote.
I’m OK with it. The 16 year olds of today who are keen on voting will be well informed and not yet crushed by disillusionment. As the voting system is FPP, I don’t think it’ll make that much difference – perhaps one or two marginal seats.
The voting age is already 16 for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, and neither use a simple first past the post system. If people are looking for experience of changing the voting age, or alternative voting systems, there is already experience to draw on.
This is surely the important fact that has not been mentioned above – the proposed change just brings things into alignment across England, Scotland and Wales?
Think Scotland and Wales 16yr-olds couldn’t previously vote in UK General Elections just their own countries’ parliamentary stuff?
My daughter will be furious with this. She was 16 when we had the Brexit referendum and she couldn’t vote. She was and is a staunch remainer and she feels , most likely correctly, that had 16 years been allowed to vote we would still be in Europe.
Incidentally Scottish 16 year olds were allowed to vote in their referendum
I welcome the news and another positive step from Labour although am sure the Tory press will be seething.
Mine, too. And the younger they were/are, the more they lost by leaving the EU.
I forget the exact figure, but a recent survey said a rerun today would be 70/30 against. Which made me think “who are the 30% who think things have got better?”
I’m not convinced 16-18 year olds are any less able to make rational decisions, when properly-informed, than any older age group.
And, as mentioned above, if they have to pay taxes on earnings, they should have the same say in how their taxes are spent as older age groups.
I totally agree that if you take tax from someone then they deserve a vote on who they give their taxes to. It also seems odd that you can now vote for an MP at sixteen but cannot be an MP until you’re eighteen!
Yep, pleased with this. I wouldn’t be against a cap on voting, say, 75.
All the absolute hokum I hear on a daily basis is by older white people.
Heard a guy on the bus (88) yesterday banging on about the fishing industry… do you know how much that industry means to our economy? I looked it up later. It’s something like 0.02 or 0.03%!
Another geezer today (65) doesn’t think that having a speed limit of 20 instead of 30 saves lives. Erm… I think it probably does!
None of them think immigration is a good idea, even though there are fields all around them with unpicked fruit and flowers.
Bring on the 16-year-olds.
75 year old here…thanks.
“All the absolute hokum I hear on a daily basis is by older white people.”
Hark at Clayton Bigsby over here.
Out of curiosity, how many old non white people do you know ?
His record collection seems to be full of them
How about an intelligence test before anyone gets enfranchised?
*ducks, gets popcorn, leans back into comfy chair*
I’m likely to banned from here shortly but the present system gives votes to my brother in-law’s family who are fiercely loyal, mostly hard-working, honest working-class people but unfortunately have approximately 7 brain cells shared between them. Now, that’s truly frightening.
Always said a benign dictator along the lines of Obama is the way to go…
I think what’s more important for our under-18s is that our education system should be teaching critical thinking / bullshit detection.
Great intelligence is not really necessary to discern what’s real from what isn’t if some basic training is given early enough in life.
Of course none of the major political parties and movements are likely to go for that idea, because they rely so heavily on bullshitting us.
Great intelligence does not really mean anything, it’s what you do with it that counts. I work with some Cambridge PhDs who I would not trust to tie their own shoelaces.
The difference between Scientists and Engineers.
Does nobody remember Fatcher Yoof? Those of us with funny haircuts who’d been at Victoria Park in ‘78 were giving it the full “Alan Parker – Urban Warrior”, and 18 year olds were in “Next” suits and enjoying winding up the “commie punks” and hippies. Who won the UK elections in the 80s?
I think Starmer’s overlooking the possibility that a charismatic and utterly amoral Andrew Tate-alike will appear to a) shill for Farage, b) dethrone Farage, or c) create a grassroots movement of his own and persuade all the unpleasant little bastards who stink of Lynx and cheap weed to actually vote.
If 16 is the age you are allowed to do adult things, then 16 should be the age you are allowed to vote. There is just as much logic stopping people who have retired from voting as there is from stopping young adults voting. None.
(spin to 2:32)
It’s all very well getting the vote at 16, but you still can’t drink in pubs
Sorry Rigid I’m not having a go at you as this is obviously not your fault but is anyone else having a problem with this You Tube clip. The bloody thing opens unprompted every time I log into the blog, everytime I open this thread to read a post. It’s driving me nuts. I have to manually find the bloody post and pause the damn video to shut it the fu*k up. I’ve dropped the maiden aunts a message about this yesterday evening but nothing has changed.
How do I cure this!!
Plays as you say unprompted I’ve got the sound off and there is an option on the video to unmute it. I’m not doing that.
Yes! Really annoying.
It gave me a proper jump scare!
Daily motion vids seem to autoplay. Proper flipping annoying, but does seem to stop eventually
(Note to self: if a video is only on daily motion, don’t post it and move on ..,)
I had to get a 16-year-old to find out how to turn it off.
They can turn off Daily Motion vids…but still cannot drink in pubs.
Probably just as well if they’re constantly on call to resolve complex IT problems
Total carnage if all of the IT experts were pissed as newts.
If you vote at 16 then there’s a good chance that you’ll be 18 during the subsequent Parliament. Why shouldn’t you have a say in issues which will directly affect your life?
If 16 year-olds had been able to vote at the Brexit referendum; the most important decision affecting their lives; we might have had a better result for the country.
Arguing that 16 year-olds cannot make an informed decision is a ridiculous generalisation. Have you spoken to Reform voters? Informed, my arse.
If giving 16 year-olds the vote makes it less likely that the right gains power, then I’m all for it. Watch The Mail, Express, Telegraph and Sun try to rip the policy and Starmer to shreds.
That alone should tell you it’s the right thing to do.
They should make it so people can only vote UNTIL the age of 16. That’d make everything far more interesting.
Can’t see the harm to be honest.
There is an argument that the younger population are more to the left (or the greens?), whilst there is also a some truth (at least in my experience) that as some people get older they move towards the right (some even lurch fully to the far right!). So doubt it would sway anything in the final counting.
“How can we be sure that 16 year olds are fully enough informed for such a responsibility?”
Which leads to the question that someone aged 17 years 364 days doesn’t know “stuff”, but give them a day and they are bestowed with wisdom.
And I’m pretty sure there are some 16 / 17 year olds better informed than some of the current voting populace
It’s absolutely the right thing to do. Apart from the “no taxation without representation” angle, they have a great deal more to lose / gain than the grey vote. And anyone questioning the intellectual capacity of 16 year olds needs to be reminded it was a cohort dominated by over 60s that selected Liz Truss to become party leader and PM, and is almost identical among Reform voters and members.
There’s a certain illogicality going on.
If that age bracket possess sufficient capacity to be able to vote, then they possess sufficient capacity to receive adult sized sentences for crimes instead of the automatic deduction they get in law right now.
On then plus side, this might finally embolden a government to address some of the generational injustices that David Willets and others have been complaining about for years. Hopefully the Triple Lock would be the first to go.
Hmmm, a brave comment here, where the average age is getting on a fair bit. I get the cost of it to cash strapped government but I also see the stats around how low in the league table of European old age pensions we are. I think it will go, and will remain grateful for my work pension, but there are those who don’t have that net. And the proportion of those unwilling or unable to plan for the same seems to huge and growing. So many of my children’s friends, all around the 40 mark, haven’t even considered it.
The situation that pertained 30 years ago has changed radically. There are, for example, now far more children living in poverty than pensioners. And on average, pensioners have a greater disposable income than working families. As Nogbad suggests, perhaps an extended franchise will encourage a greater dialogue on the issue.
Just look what happened when the Govt tried to address just the so-called Winter Fuel Allowance, which is a nonsensical and deeply flawed benefit for pensioners. Of course it should only go to those that need it and many of us barely notice it going into our bank accounts, but by crikey the backlash illustrated why governments fear to do anything in this area.
The image of the penurious pensioner has lived on in the British folk memory, but just looking around would show that it is no longer true for a great many. At the same time, anyone relying solely on the state pension for income will likely be genuinely poor without savings or at least property.
As others have pointed out, yes, you can join the army at sixteen, but you can’t be deployed to the front lines until you’re eighteen.
The tax argument is a bit spurious. Outside of child actors, how many sixteen year olds pay income tax, for example? 16-18 years olds are mandated to stay in education/training. According to gov.uk, 92.2 % of 16-17 year olds are currently in education/training. 4.6% are NEETS (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). The tax threshold is £12,570. The minimum wage at sixteen is £7.55 p/h, which means you’d have to work 1664 hours – or 43 weeks of full-time work – to pay income tax. You’d have to have one hell of a Saturday job to pay income tax.
Had interesting chat with mid-teens relative recently who bemoaned the influence of older folk who wanted younger people to work and drop tax / NI into triple-locked pensions, but nimby’ed new housing developments which spoiled their view of trees.
He also felt that the much-trumpeted dodgy work ethic amongst younger people was because they had shit jobs competing with AI,lousy pay, insane private rent and little chance of progress towards owning a house or having a family..Yes, that’s all pretty broadbrush, but anything which seeks to include more views is IMHO to be welcomed.
Bring on the Youth vote.. Perhaps Fauxrage can borrow William Hague’s baseball cap !
Someone has just pointed out they may be able to vote but they can’t stand as a candidate.
Or sit on a jury.
Maximum age for jury service is 75 – raised from 70 a few years ago. These age things are somewhat arbitrary and linking them is not really useful.
If you can serve your country in the armed forces, pay tax, claim benefits and drink beer, wine and cider in a pub with food at 16, go to prison and drive a car at 17, then waiting to be 18 to vote seems odd.
You go to prison for a reduced amount of time compared to an adult because you are believed to not be as responsible and lack full capacity.
If that’s the case, do you really have capacity to vote?
Honest answer to this question?
We’d probably need to ask ourselves whether we can meaningfully distinguish between voting and judicial sentencing.
Sentencing occurs at an individual level, as a societal verdict on the actions of the subject. It involves a moral element that isn’t really present in voting in the same way; the subject is simply being asked to make a participatory decision.
Should the bar for sentencing be higher than for voting? Yes, quite probably. The stakes are clearly higher; being tried as an adult has the possibility to ruin the life of a 16 year old, whereas it’s difficult to see how being permitted to vote could do likewise.
For the same reason, we allow adults the defence of diminished responsibility for any number of offences – a claim of abnormal mental function, which is treated as a mitigating factor and can reduce sentencing. There is no equivalent mechanic with regard to voting – we do not feel the need to establish a baseline of mental function for adults, because we understand that the consequences of an individual vote are generally negligible when compared to a judicial sentence. If the two processes were a 1:1 match this discrepancy in approach would feel jarring, and yet it doesn’t.
Ultimately, it isn’t that difficult to distinguish voting and sentencing – they’re not really equivalent social functions.
If we’re looking for a social function which is experienced collectively, has no moral component and really is a pure test of mental capacity then I would suggest exams. Which would beg the question of why we subject our 16 year olds to national standardised tests, the results of which will follow them for life, if we don’t believe their mental capacity to be reasonably well formed by that age. I would suggest if you can be expected to handle GCSE maths you can probably be trusted with a vote.
That is a much more (thank you Bingo) eloquent explanation of of my point. Picking a single age to allow people to be equally responsible doesn’t make much sense. 16 is a perfectly sensible age to allow people to have a minuscule say in who is elected.
I dread to imagine the onslaught of TikTok videos, YouTube ads, celebrity endorsements the marketing/spin geniuses across the board will come up with to attract the newly enfranchised teen vote at the next election. Farage riding Lamborghinis with Andrew Tate, Starmer woodenly busking with Ed Sheeran outside Parliament, whatsisname from the LibDems travelling the country in 24 hours doing ice bucket challenges in each city etc.
You don’t think there are airheads of all ages already, who would be affected (to some extent already) by such campaigns?
My neice is now in her 40s and an airheaded single mother. Her daughter, just turned 16 and seemingly about to be enfranchised, is probably more mature in her outlook.
Interesting to read today that Andrew Neil, ( not the font of all knowledge, but an astute observer) shares my view that this might not be the sure fire winner that Labour probably originally envisaged. He thinks the likely beneficiaries are the Greens, Reform and the new ‘Jezzbollah’ party and associated indies. It probably won’t mean much at a national level, but could be very impactful at a very local level, particularly given the wafer thin margins in many seats.
The last thing anyone wants is a genuinely left wing government that won’t kowtow to Israel. Good to start the name-calling and smears early.
Please Miss @Gary is being a communist. 😉
He may be red, but he’s not getting under my bed!
Despite his recent choice of employers, Andrew Neil is one of the UK’s savvier political commentators and I think he’s bang on the money here.
Think the next election will see the end of the two-party system and the dawn of an era of endless confidence and supply arrangements or full-fat coalition governments.
AN odd excellent in that he doesn’t hide his personal perspective but he’s equally hard on everyone. He gave Johnson a right shoeing.
I read that coalition governments generally give better long term outcomes regardless of your views of ours.
As the last coalition government imposed austerity, instigated Brexit and bequeathed us the preposterous cash cow of Hs2 I’ll take a hard pass on that.
If you’ve never read it, consider Prof David Runciman’s proposal to lower the voting age to six. Ridiculous? Maybe. But he makes some very good points along the way.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/reconstruction-after-covid-votes-for-children-age-six-david-runciman?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Screwming Lord Sutch was one of the first to campaign for a lowering of the voting age (albeit from 21 to 18) when he ran against soon-to-be PM Harold Wilson in 2964).
Considered absurd at the time, a lot of the stuff in his manifesto now seems full of common sense
Be interesting to see whether the first changes our newly enfranchised teen voters campaign for include a lowering of the ages one can get behind the wheel of a car and/or buy booze in a pub (though hopefully they will refrain from doing so at the same time)
When the dust settles I fully expect the sky to have not fallen in and the change to have made very little discernible difference.
Going to be interesting to see how the various parties – Lab, Con, Lib Dems, Reform, Green et al go about touting for the “virgin” voters though
It will but difficult to predict this far from the next GE. I suspect some of the wooing my be inadvertently quite amusing.
Agreed.
Given the way Starmer caved into his party’s bolshier backbenchers on welfare cuts and pissed off a fair number of centrist MPs who previously toed the party line, he’s going to have to pull some rabbits out of the hat to fight it, interesting to see if he’s still around to fight it.
Badenoch also seems to be on borrowed time. Doubt very much if the electorate will have forgotten – never mind forgiven – the previous four Tory leaders for the mess they left.
The smaller/under-represented/new parties must be licking their lips with glee.
Not sure how our politics will fare in the future with 6 or more parties fighting it out. I fully expect the Tories to dwindle to virtually nothing, rather like the Liberals did in the last half of the 20th century. Some of their One-Nation diehards may cling on, but the headbangers will eventually slide off into Reform and some of the more moderate ones might find a home in the Lib-Dems or even Starmer’s Labour.
The left-ier Labour people might well start leaving for the Greens or the Corbyn Gang in England. In Wales and Scotland things are a bit more chaotic.
I expect the opposite. I reckon the Conservative brand is much more resilient than the Labour brand. Commentators keep telling us that voters are much less loyal nowadays, but I reckon that the rump of come-what-may Tories is larger than Labour loyalists.
I might add that I say this with regret.
They do say there’s never been a Labour government which the Left don’t hate. The theory is the Tory rump is shrinking through natural wastage, though I have not statistics to back this up.
The Tories are like herpes impossible to get rid of.
Interesting (?!?) post from Michael, Lord Flabbycunt, in my fb feed today, oxymoron tho’ that may sound, predicting a slide of Tories into Reform, bar a few diehards, which can then be a phoenix of revival, as/if/when a Reform govt fails to deliver. He doesn’t see much love on the vine for Starmer and the current shambles of his not really very socialist socialism.
(Quite why it appeared in my feed, I don’t know, other than I live in Lichfield too. Maybe the algorithm assumes and insists.)
Tory voters who might in Germany have been Christian Democrats will find no home with either the LibDems or Labour. A new party is likelier.
Sutch… what a complete legend!
Dog passports was definitely one of his and I’m sure he suggested a big wheel or funfair in London long before the Eye was thought of.
In many cases, and probably not in the seats where the votes will make a difference, they probably don’t need to target younger voters, as they will vote the same way as their parents.
@ernietothecentreoftheearth
Surprising how swiftly political principles will crumble in the face of a suspension of pocket money
He will also be campaigning for time travel for all, albeit in his future manifesto due in another 939 years.
He”ll be taking on General Zog in the marginal seat of Zager and Evans
South
The 16-year-olds currently giving Daily Mail readers the screaming abdabs will be old enough to vote at the next general election anyway. The government should be wooing 13-year-olds.
Of course, I hadn’t thought of that!
Can I do a Sutch story?
OK, Sutch is playing Camborne in the mid-60s, gets to the venue and only half the tickets have been sold. Sutch knocks on a few doors until he finds someone with a piano, wheels it out to the factory opposite where he’s playing that night (the Skating Rink) and at 5 p.m., when all the workers troop out, starts blasting Rock ‘n’ Roll at them.
Gig that night? Sold out.
It would be more in keeping with SLS’s chronically unlucky career if even those who’d bought tickets had failed to show up
Quite right they should get the vote. They’ll be living with the decisions made by the government longer than the halfwit old gits voting the country into the abyss
(Disclaimer- I know not everyone who is an old git votes this way- but it’s more often than not the case..)