“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 |
 36 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?
I seem to recall that there were young people who were entitled to vote bawling their eyes out when the result of the EU Referendum was announced. They hadn’t realised that they had to actually vote if they wanted a specific outcome. There was a guy who thought that the EU Referendum was about football. I have also heard of people voting for the candidate that they didn’t want because they thought that they were voting them off like they do on reality TV.
The Leave side in the EU Referendum was significantly aided by the fact that Glastonbury was on at the same time. Festival-goers could, of course, have arranged postal votes in advance but loads of them didn’t think of it.
How Glastonbury reacted to Brexit – Evening Standard, 24th June 2016.
To be fair, most 16-17 year olds can’t afford Glasto tickets.
Fraser Orr asks, “Does that mean that people, whatever age, who don’t pay taxes should not have a say in how tax money is spent?”
Don’t tempt me.
Should be interesting. UK 15-year-olds about to be banned from social media (read that somewhere) because they’re too immature, but the next day at 16, they can vote!
But this sounds like it might backfire on Labor. Kids are coming out more conservative than their parents these days. Farage probably appeals to more 16-year-old boys than Starmer.
Keir Starmer said it was important that teenagers who paid taxes had their say on how the money was spent.
So, thirTEEN-year-olds who pay taxes can vote?
@jgh
So, thirTEEN-year-olds who pay taxes can vote?
Or more importantly is he saying that thirty year olds who don’t pay taxes can’t vote?
I have history on this one. Nobody living out of the public purse should vote.
I’d do a slightly limited version of this.
Nobody living out of the public purse should vote on uses or sources of the public purse.
Maybe the ones who’ve been attacked or r@ped will vote conservative?
@Roué le Jour
I have history on this one. Nobody living out of the public purse should vote.
FWIW, I was actually just pointing out how stupid Starmer’s logic was. However, I think even people who don’t pay taxes should get to vote on what the law should be. Rather than saying “nobody living out of the public purse should vote”, I’d rather say “nobody should be living out of the public purse.”
I think people from the Western nations are more than charitable enough to help the truly destitute without the tax man threatening them with arrest if they don’t do so.
Perry de Havilland (Prague):
No. Instead smoking, driving, and drinking laws will be adjusted to treat over-21 adults as if they were children too.
Young children. Because the Authorities are determined to treat children as if they were half their actual age. 16 year olds? Treat them as if they were 8, with all the restrictions and limitations on their actions that an age of 8 would legitimize.
A reasonable compromise could be:
One citizen, one vote for the lower chamber;
A personal voting weight monotonically increasing with net tax contributions for the upper chamber. (A voting weight equal to the logarithm of net tax contributions seems reasonable.)
I am too young to vote
Two points,
Firstly the system has to be brutally simple or the left will nickel and dime their way back onto the public teat. I would respect the blood or treasure principle, Heinlein’s “Service guarantees citizenship.” But then the left will argue for the police, then the whole CJS, then the bureaucrats.
Secondly universal suffrage is a moral hazard. People vote out of self interest. There will always be more people who consider themselves to be “have nots” than haves. All that is required to get elected is to say “vote for me and I will tax the rich and share the proceeds with you.” This is exactly what happens all over the west. It is simply socialism via the scenic route.
@Roué le Jour
Secondly universal suffrage is a moral hazard. People vote out of self interest. There will always be more people who consider themselves to be “have nots” than haves.
But, TBH I think you are only looking at it from one end. Sure the number of people who are not rich is much larger than those who are rich, and certainly they vote out of self interest. It is overly simplistic to say they vote automatically to soak the rich. Here in the USA the culture suppressed that urge because the poor wanted to be, and thought they had a path to being, one of the rich themselves.
But even if we assume the bulk of the voters are inclined to support candidates who promise to soak the rich there is another side to it. It is very expensive to get elected, and so the only people who have the money to pay for that are the rich. Therefore the political candidate is caught between promising an agenda that the “soak the rich” crowd want in exchange for their vote, and promising an agenda that “the rich” want in exchange for their money. And let’s be clear, some rich people’s agenda is “leave me alone” but there are a substantial number of rich people who want to use the power of government to give themselves huge government contracts, sinecures, unfair protection from competition and on and on. So “the rich” are often the worst welfare queens in the country.
So, in a sense, corruption is an essential part of democracy to make it work. A necessity to counteract the pitchfork and torches brigade.
But I think the solution is to put the blame where it truly lies. I think it is perfectly legitimate for people to seek their own advantage. The problem is not that the people vote for a politician who will pass laws giving them transfer payments. No, rather the problem is that the politician has the power in the first place to pass such a law. The problem is not the “not rich” voters, or the “rich” political paymasters, but that the politicians have the power to use the power and force of government to pay off these two constituencies at other people’s expense.
And so we come to September 17th, 1787 when a group of men of very mixed character came together to produce an amazing document. A document that limited the power of the federal government to an enumerated list and which distributed the power of government up into fractured separate, competing jurisdictions, where one could chose which jurisdiction one was subject to. And then implemented an independent judiciary to enforce these limits on the power of the executive and congress. It is why I think that Marbury vs Madison is perhaps one of the most important court decisions in history. It is only by finding a way to limit the scope of government that these sorts of abuses can be prevented. And, putting aside the horrific blot of slavery, for a very long time that did hold back the deluge of government in the United States, and allow it to become what it became.
Certainly today, it is not that. Devious men have found various ways to sideline and undermine these limits. But it took 250 years. Nothing is perfect or can withstand the barbarian hoards forever. But it is a guidepost as to how we can have good government. Namely, but having less of it, and handcuffing its scope.
To put it another way, if government, or at least the central government, only matters at the extreme edge cases of life. If, for most of your life you barely see an officer from the government or have dealings with them, then I really don’t care who votes or who doesn’t. It is the fact that you can’t take a step without the government taxing you, inspecting you, forbidding you, controlling you, interfering with you, or manipulating you to their own advantage that makes politics so important. And that alone is the reason that it matters if 16 year olds vote.
I’m perfectly fine with local government being more involved, providing roads, fire and police. After all, if you don’t like them you can move to the next town over. But it tells you a lot about the political imbalance of federalism (or it’s British equivalent or devolution and local government) that people care VASTLY more about who is President or Prime Minister than they do about who is mayor or head of the local council. Hands up anyone who even knows the name of the mayor or head of their local council?
Childish behaviour is not confined to 16 year olds – at the last council elections I had adult-in-years people saying “I am voting for Ben-and-Ben” (the Green Party candidates) in a weird sing-song way – and when asked why they were voting for them, these voters (again well into adulthood in years) just said “they-are-active-in-the-community” or just “Ben-and-Ben” – in the same sing-song way.
As a life-long democrat (small “d” Americans please note) it was heart breaking to have some (some) people treat a Council Election for a body with a Billion Pound budget in such as childish way. If they had just voted for the Reform Party, perhaps believing the lies that I (and others) had stolen 400 million Pounds, I could have understood it – but voting for “Ben-and-Ben” because they happened to have the same first name, and chanting “they-are-active-in-the-community” in the same childish sing-song way (and this was sometimes people in their 50s and 60s), was just too much.
Would 16 year voters really be any worse?
Fraser Orr – the leader of North Northants Unitary Authority is Councillor Griffiths of the Reform Party, who has kept his promise to take down the weird flags (“Pride”, “African Unity” and so on), he will find the other Reform promises rather more difficult – but let us not go into that here. At least he has kept a promise made to the voters – and he deserves praise for that.
The Mayor of Kettering Town (the Borough was abolished four years ago) is one “the Ben’s” (they are both also Unitary Authority Councillors – not just Town Councillors) – which one I am not sure, I think it is the one who lives in the same street as me. His family name, as I sit here, escapes me.
I am sure he is, personally, a charming chap who means well – even though the national Green Party seems to want to get rid of people of my ethnic background – who are, supposedly, “exploiters and oppressors” of “the Palestinians” (an ethnic group that was created a few decades ago).
In this they are loyal to the origins of the Green movement, in Germany and elsewhere, which held that Jews are inherently greedy and (again inherently – by blood) have no feeling for nature.
And Tide pod eating, ice bucket challenges, and how many marshmallows you can shove up your bum, be requisites for entering the civil service.
I suspect the third already is, or at least a willingness to try.
Neither serving members of this government, nor their esteemed advisors, appear to have learned the lesson of Boaty McBoatface. Ask a grown-up question to a mind which, government policy dictates in the OP link, still requires the benefits of further education, and you might not get a sensible, or centrist answer.
16-17 year olds are, in my experience, rather less likely to vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee in Red or Blue neckties, than for joke candidates, extremists, and shit-stirrers of every imaginable stripe. Government ministers and senior civil servants might have taken the piss out of authority figures once upon a time, but that must have been an awful long time ago if they think this policy will turn class-clowns and tearaways into the Youth Parliament CV hacks they used to be when they were young.
According to the Wiki article linked above, Jennifer Finney Boylan of The New York Times – of whom until today I confess I’d never heard, but who sounds uniquely gifted in conveying unintentional humour at her own expense – appears to have written that:
She makes it sound as if that were a bad thing.
Judging by outcomes and the current situation of politics – nothing can make it worse. So, giving the vote to 16 year olds doesn’t matter. It can’t make things worse. I mean – adult voters are as irresponsible and dumb as children. So, what difference does it make?
Jacob – it is hard to dispute what you say, although the “right wing” vote was split in 2024 – the brutal fact remains that this is the worst House of Commons in British history.
I think many people have not yet grasped just how utterly despicable the present House is – it is no longer a matter of weak politicians not really fighting back against insane officials and “experts” – the present House of Commons is mostly filled with people who are just as bad as the officials and “experts”.
There is nothing, in either economic or social policy, that is too horrible for the present House of Commons to support – they support every utterly evil doctrine (again in both economic and social policy).
I would add that you don’t have to be particularly wealthy to be wary that the government might find new ways to steal your money. People in the middle are being very naive if they think that it is only likely to be “The Rich”, meaning richer than they themselves, that are going to be wrung out by a profligate state.
X Trapnel.
Recently I commented here that the Bank of England wants ideas for new “inclusive” bank note designs. I suggested everyone sugeests “Notey McNoteface”.
I have submitted that idea. Everyone, please flood their servers! Do it for England and yourself! Do it to tell them what we think of our joke currency and ersatz economy. Do it more than anything else to sound that glorious barbaric yawp, “Fuck Off!”.
“So will smoking, driving, and drinking ages be adjusted to reflect how adult 16 year olds are?”
Or military service?
Or marriage?
Or taxation?
Or any laws related to minors 16-17 in age?
The list is no doubt longer…
JJM,
You can’t buy Tipex until you are 18.
Fraser,
I don’t disagree with what you say at all. But you are assuming that when my imaginary politician said he would “tax the rich” he was telling the truth. Of course, he was lying.
Regrettably I lack Paul’s encyclopedic knowledge of political history, but I seem to recall that Bismarck invented welfarism as a bulwark against communism, the plan being to tax the top end of the working class to fund benefits for the bottom end, leaving the rich well alone. Essentially this continues to be the plan.
On the subject of universal suffrage, as Sir Humphrey has said, the answer you get depends on how you phrase the question. Should everyone have a say in EU membership? Sure, why not. Should the unproductive have any input in to the level of taxation applied to the productive? Hard NO.
I have wondered about whether it would be better to separate out welfare completely from the government in to a separate organization. A separation of welfare and warfare, if you will. Welfare was after all, traditionally a responsibility of the church, not the state. No doubt this would have it’s own set of problems.
Finally let me say as an Englishman that I think the US constitution is the very definition of western civilization. It should be taught across the west as such. The fact that it isn’t tells you all you need to know about the attitudes of non US governments to liberty and prosperity.
A truly stupid idea. The U.S. reduced its voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971. I argued against it at the time. Our brains are not fully developed until about age 26. If anything, the voting age should be increased. Teenagers are stupid by definition.
If you set the voting age according the brain development, you need to set up all sorts of complicated methods of testiung brain development to grant the vote, and then you have the problem of who decides who the people deciding what the testing system and qualifying attainment is, who who dcides who they are, and turles all the way down.
It is so much simpler and non-arbitary to simply tie the franchise to adult citizenship.