“Voting age to be lowered to 16 in UK by next general election”, the Guardian reports.
No, this does not mean you can leave school. You are too young and irresponsible to make such a big decision.
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Congratulations, sixteen year olds! We now trust you to help decide the nation’s futureNatalie Solent (Essex) · Children's issues · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Education & Academia · UK affairs July 17th, 2025 |
 7 comments to Congratulations, sixteen year olds! We now trust you to help decide the nation’s futureLeave a Reply |
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This sort of thing usually indicates that the partys ideas are too half-bakes and hare-brained to convince a politically ignorant 18 year old, so they need to widen the target demographic to include the even more politically ignorant 16 year olds.
So will smoking, driving, and drinking ages be adjusted to reflect how adult 16 year olds are?
Billl,
I have a feeling this may backfire on Labour.
Perry, Natalie,
Does anyone have a full list of what you can and can’t do at 16? Can you get your own place to live? Can you get a phone contract?
How do you justify only *some* children having adult voting rights? “They can work”. So can 12-year-olds. “They can pay tax”. So can 12-year-olds. “They can join the army”. That’s an argument to ban child soldiers, not to give some children the vote.
Keir Starmer said it was important that teenagers who paid taxes had their say on how the money was spent.
Does that mean that people, whatever age, who don’t pay taxes should not have a say in how tax money is spent? Or that, perhaps, people who pay more taxes should have more of a say in how their money is spent?
The best thing we can hope for is that there is a massive majority in Stormzy being voted in as the next Prime Minister. And Tide pod eating,ice bucket challenges, and how many marshmallows you can shove up your bum, be requisites for entering the civil service. What can go wrong?