Tories: Starmer plan to let 16-year-olds vote will fix elections for Labour

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.

The Labour leader is reportedly planning to lower the voting age in his first year in government if he wins the General Election in July.

It would give the right to vote to more than 1.5million people under the age of 18, and become the largest change to the electoral system since the voting age was cut 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.

The process took less than six months in Scotland, while in Wales the legislation passed in less than a year after being introduced.

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 if 16 and 17-year-olds voted in the same way as those aged 1824, 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’.

And Patrick English, at YouGov, said: ‘We would generally expect that lowering the voting age would be electorally advantageous to Labour, as younger people are significantly more likely to back them over the Conservatives.’ Some parts of the UK would see a greater number of new voters able to go to the polls than others, Commons analysis has shown. In the Hodge Hill constituency in Birmingham, the voting-age population would increase by 5 per cent. But in the Cities of London and Westminster, it would increase by 1.3 per cent.

Younger age groups usually see a lower turnout. In the 2010 election, 18 to 21-year-olds had a turnout rate of 40 per cent – around half that of those aged over 65.

Teenagers aged 16 and 17 can already vote in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Brazil and Austria, as well as for some elections in Germany, Malta and Norway.

Sir Keir has previously faced a backlash within his party over the plans. Labour MP Graham Stringer

‘Motivation behind this is political self-interest’

said it would ‘smack of party political self-interest on the basis that young people are more likely to vote Labour than Conservative’.

LAST September, the veteran Labour MP Graham Stringer told The Mail on Sunday that ‘we have to draw the line somewhere on the voting age, and I simply believe most youngsters at 16 are not mature enough to exercise that right’.

He added: ‘I’m afraid that, were the Labour leader to put this forward, it would smack of party-political self-interest on the basis that young people are more likely to vote Labour or Liberal Democrat than Conservative.’

Now that Sir Keir Starmer has signalled quite clearly that he plans to bring in votes at 16 within a year of taking office (if he does), the existing electorate has a chance to judge the action before it is too late.

Citizens might be wise to be cautious. Britain as a whole has a startling age versus youth divide in its politics. Last September, the National Centre for Social Research reported that ‘age has become the biggest demographic divide in British politics, with younger people being more likely to vote Labour’. Labour beat the Conservatives by 43 percentage points among 18- to 24-year-olds at the last election. It is hard to imagine that Sir Keir would pursue this policy if young people were more Right-wing than the middle-aged or the old.

Supporters of the change like to say that under-18s must face many of the responsibilities of life, so they should be allowed a part in choosing the government. But in fact the law, especially in England, still places many restrictions on them.

Existing rules say under-18s cannot drink alcohol in pubs, cannot be tattooed, cannot buy cigarettes and cannot serve on juries. Is there any pressure to remove these wise limits?

Although they may join up at 16, members of the Armed Forces cannot legally be deployed on the front line until they turn 18. As for marriage, English law was recently changed, with support from all major parties, to raise the minimum age from 16 to 18 (this does not apply in Scotland or Northern Ireland). This change was made to protect young people from being manipulated or exploited.

All these rules suggest a strong belief that 16 is too young to take some very major decisions. The case against votes at 16 is strong. The Starmer policy is both cynical and self-serving, and it is hard to claim that there is universal agreement that 16-year-olds are fully ready to take the major decisions involved in voting.

But there is a deeper question. How far is Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party willing to change the rules and move the goalposts to stay in power? The Blair government showed that Labour have a huge appetite for major and lasting constitutional change, and we know that Gordon Brown has already set out plans for a dramatic reform of Parliament itself.

Some may imagine that they can give Labour a chance, and then easily remove them from office if (as is more than likely) they make the usual mess. It may not prove that easy in practice.