Keir Starmer’s plan to give 16-year-olds the right to vote would ‘rig’ the electoral system against the Conservatives for years to come, Tories have claimed.
If the Labour leader wins the July general election, he allegedly intends to decrease the voting age in his first year in office.
More than 1.5 million people under the age of 18 would be granted the ability to vote, making it the biggest modification to the electoral system since the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1969.
Sir Keir said: ‘Yes, I want to see 16 and 17-year-olds voting. If you can work, if you can pay tax, if you can serve in your Armed Forces, then you ought to be able to vote.’
Speaking on a visit to Stafford, Sir Keir added that young people ‘should have a say on how their money is being used’.
Opponents argue young people are too immature to make informed political judgments, with the policy branded ‘cynical’ because it is expected to benefit Labour.
Tory MP Tom Hunt said it was ‘an attempt by Labour to rig the vote in their favour’, adding: ‘The motivation behind this is perceived political self-interest, nothing else.’
Fellow Tory MP Bob Seely said: ‘Labour haven’t even won and already they are trying to rig the voting system.
‘Perhaps Labour think younger voters will be easier to pull the wool over than older folks with a bit of life experience.’
And Sir Iain Duncan Smith accused Sir Keir of ‘virtue signalling’, adding: ‘This is a gimmick done by those who think their party is more likely to get the vote.’
Labour has been closely studying how Scotland and Wales cut the voting age. In Scotland, those aged 16 can vote in local and Scottish Parliament elections, while in Wales they can vote in local and Welsh Parliament elections.
In Scotland, the procedure took less than six months, whilst the Welsh law was enacted less than a year after it was first proposed.
A Labour source told The Times the move ‘has the double benefit of not costing very much to do but of helping secure a second Labour term’. Analysis by the newspaper showed that if 16 and 17-year-olds voted in the same way as those aged 18-24, an extra eight seats would switch from the Tories to Labour.
Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, while he was Tory party deputy chairman, said extending the vote to 16-year-olds would mean the Conservatives would be ‘done for’.
When the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1969, most young people left school at 15, myself included, and by their 18th birthday would have had three years working in the real world and would have acquired life experiences on which to base any political decisions. Today most now leave at 18 with no life experiences and because of this, the voting age should be increased back to 21 not lowered to 16.
Most young people will vote for a political party like they would support a football team to win. So, these youngsters might be able to vote, but would still be politically ignorant.
Many years ago, you went to work at a young age, but by the time you were old enough to vote, at least you had real-life experiences. Today, youngsters have to stay in education or training until they’re 18 years old, but when they leave they still have naivety and unworldliness so should not be allowed to vote until they have some life experiences.
I also suspect that many young voters would be swayed by a single issue such as university fees, rather than taking in the wider problems affecting the country, and lowering the voting age will do nothing to ensure the right balance of policies.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 