On extending the vote to 16-year olds.

Cynicism warning - I'm afraid some of the opinions in this post are very cynical indeed.

I do not believe there is any perfect age at which people should gain the right to vote.

However I do think there are three principles which have to apply:

1. Whatever age you pick, in the interests of fairness it has to be the same for everyone
2. It should not be arbitrarily moved up or down to suit the convenience of a particular government.
3. It should be old enough to ensure most voters have a reasonable degree of maturity but young enough that the vast majority of adults can vote.

Personally I think you can make a decent case for the voting age being at any point between 16 and 21.

Whatever arbitrary age you pick, there will be some people below it who would have been perfectly mature enough to cast a responsible and intelligently considered vote, whether I personally agree with it or not, and millions of people over that age who don't have enough majority to be trusted to do the washing-up, never mind help decide how to run our country, but who have to be given the vote because otherwise your country is not a democracy.

So there are the general principles. How do they apply to the apparent proposal from the present Labour government to bring in votes at 16 for the next general election?

Well, it passes my first criteria of the same voting age for everyone and that is about the one thing to be said for it.

But there is a complete absence of any coherent case for change. The Prime Minister says that the change is "important" as 16-year-olds are old enough to work and "pay in" through tax, so should "have the opportunity" to say how they wanted their money spent.

 Yet, as Conservative shadow minister Paul Holmes pointed out, his government doesn't seem to apply that principle to a whole host of other things and appears "hopelessly confused" about the age of majority.

He said: "Why does this Government think a 16-year-old can vote but not be allowed to buy a lottery ticket, an alcoholic drink, marry, or go to war, or even stand in the elections they're voting in?"

So this is a classic example of what I wrote would be wrong in my second principle above.

I'm sorry but we all know exactly what this is about. The Labour government is in a mad panic about the collapse in its' support, is desperately casting about for anything which might get a few more Labour votes, and thinks young voters will back Labour because they are supposedly left-wing.

This is dangerously simplistic thinking. In this country the tendency has been, with lots of exceptions on both sides, that older people vote, and younger people protest by signing petitions, joining action groups, or do nothing.

That's why governments who kick older voters in the teeth are nearly always thrown out at the following election, as I am convinced this present Labour government will be, despite their huge majority, while governments which kick young people in the teeth often survive.

Those younger people who do vote mostly come in one of two categories, they are either

1. part of the minority of people who are genuinely interested in politics
2. highly motivated, usually because they are very cross about something or think it needs to be massively improved.

The first of these groups always contains a range of people in every part of the political spectrum. As for the second group, the one party you can guarantee most of them won't be voting for is whoever is currently in power.

If you are motivated to change the present situation, why would you re-elect the people who have been in charge for the last four or five years and must be at least partly responsible for the status quo you don't like?

Especially as this present government is one of those which has kicked BOTH older voters and younger ones in the teeth.

Sir Keir Starmer may have forgotten that he stood for the leadership of the Labour party promising to abolish student tuition fees, and in government is instead planning to increase them.

But you can bet your life a lot of young voters won't have forgotten that.

If Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner imagine that most 16 and 17 year olds will be voting Labour at the next election, this is yet another area where they are hopelessly remote from reality.

In the long term Labour may sometimes be right, that lowering the voting age to 16 will help Labour candidates in future elections after the next one. I do think that the change would often help Labour opposition candidates when there is a Conservative, or right-of-centre government. 

Of course, if Labour are introducing votes at 16 because they are taking that kind of long-term view, that says something about what they think will happen to them at the next election, doesn't it?