A one-man argument for raising voting age

How on Earth did it come to this? It is the most solemn period of collective commemoration our nation observes in the year. our streets and lapels are bedecked with poppies, blood red to mark the sacrifice of those who died so we remained free.

And yet on Good Morning Britain, up pops Freddie Bentley, 22, a reality TV star, seemingly ‘gobsmacked’ that we should rake over our past, saying schools should no longer teach pupils about world war II.

He argues that learning about the extermination of six million Jews and the deaths of 85 million people is harmful to a millennial’s mental health — it’s too horrid for them.

There are more pressing issues young people need to be educated about, he says — such as climate change and how to get a mortgage.

For the uninitiated, Freddie is a former call centre worker from Essex who was the runner-up on Channel 4 reality TV show The Circle.

He is a product of our education system and culture — just like The Apprentice contestants who had no idea when world war II started.

Encouragingly, Freddie was met with a firestorm of criticism on social media, some of it even from his contemporaries. one wrote: ‘I’m a millennial and learned about wwII. He doesn’t speak for me and I would MUSICIAN Stephen Morris says having his £250,000 violin stolen after he left it on a train was ‘like having his arm cut off’. While I feel his pain at losing the unique instrument, what kind of ninny leaves anything worth a quarter of a million pounds in a luggage rack? guess he doesn’t speak for many millennials, if any.’ Freddie, though, was unabashed. ‘Good or bad tweets, I have walked away with a massive smile on my face. I’m buzzing to have been a guest on GMB and couldn’t be more proud of myself.’

It was the smile and pride of a 21st-century reality-TV ignoramus.

This wilful ignorance of our past is not only disrespectful, it is dangerous. Polls indicate many young people today, who wouldn’t have a clue about the 20 million-plus deaths Stalin was responsible for, consider the sins of capitalism greater than those of communism.

It explains why we face the possibility of a far-Left Labour government whose leader has stood under Marxist banners and have a Shadow Chancellor who declares his passion in who’s who to be ‘fermenting (sic) the overthrow of capitalism’.

Forget Jeremy Corbyn’s cynical demands that 16-year-olds should be given the franchise. Freddie, at 22, is the strongest argument for

increasing the voting age.