16 & 17 year olds to be given the vote

[Whereishenow]

Just seen this announcement on BBC now. Amazing news!!! Now we just need to try and get youngsters out USING those votes.

If older people are getting their information from newspapers, they are hardly reliable and unbiased either are they? Most have a very strong political agenda, and are not immune from telling out and out lies either.

Voting age already changed to 16 in Wales in 2020 (Senedd) and 2021(local elections).

I think this will gift reform the next election - farage is massively popular among young boys/men on tiktok. He knows how to reach and appeal to that age! I have 2 boys in this age range so this will affect them and they are not mature enough to vote and not listen to propaganda on socials to inform their voting… ditto most of their friends!

Oh yeh for sure. Still it does impact voting and we might see big shifts in policy due to that change.

Yes, I absolutely agree. As I said, it would be a very risky strategy, and it certainly isn't an approach that I would advocate. It would rely on the public retaining the option of voting the fuckers out when they realise what an awful mistake they have made, and we can already see the systematic attempts at dismantling democracy which are happening in the US, so it should be obvious that we can't rely on that at all.

Personally, I think it would be disastrous to let Reform in, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of others thinking that letting them actually win might be the best way of finishing them once and for all.

I agree with this. I had a lot more autonomy at 16 than 16 year olds seem to today. The idea of a transition between childhood and adulthood seems to have gone out of the window.

I fully support the lowering of the voting age and think that it should be extended further, so all long term permanent UK residents are allowed to vote.

Anyway, 16 year olds are not any less capable as a cohort as some fully grown adults seem to be, based on some of the comments here and across social media generally!

I’d have thought it would just lead to more reform votes. We had a reform family in polling station- mum and dad waving pens around (we’d have given them one if they asked) and shouting at poor teen daughter to mark cross good and hard so we didn’t rub it out. Was like a comedy sketch but felt sorry for girl who looked embarrassed.

Well exactly. I mean it is not the youngsters buying paper copies on the Mail is it?

Let’s be real, most of the people voting now don’t understand those complexities. If they did, reform wouldn’t be leading the polls in so many areas on the basis of “STOP THE BOATS”, despite illegal immigration making up less than 1% of all immigration to this country.

If you're not old enough to be trusted to drink alcohol or take out a phone co tract, then I struggle to understand how you can be trusted to vote.

Terrible idea. 16/17 year olds do have values and ideas but they don't have experience of being let down again and again by politicians. They will vote for the policies they see on the page and not know that the likelihood of them being delivered is minuscule. On top of that most of them will turn to a trusted source to tell them which way to vote so you are just handing an extra vote to parents, teachers, influencers or religious leaders.

I also agree that they are more likely to vote for the extremes.

But they can't be trusted to drink alcohol or buy a house, or work full time . .

If they can now vote, then they can be trusted to do all the other things adults can do

I don’t think that’s why Starmer is doing this. He really does want to stay in.

"Totally ridiculous move. As a secondary school teacher, I would say that the majority of 16 year olds do not have the maturity to vote and cannot grasp the complexities of politics, the economy, the NHS, etc. They also do not have the responsibilities of the adult world, eg mortgages/rent; supporting a family; job, so have no understanding of how their vote affects all these areas."

This is my experience of the cohort.

To paraphrase, there is no point giving someone the power to change the future for the better if they don't understand what's wrong with the present.

These are people that we don't allow to use a sunbed or buy a lottery ticket. But it's good news for Corbyn and Nigel Farage...

Well of course he wants to stay in! As has every PM that has gone before him.

"To paraphrase, there is no point giving someone the power to change the future for the better if they don't understand what's wrong with the present."

This is absolutely the point!

That used to be the argument for keeping women away from voting or people under 35, or people who did not own land or a house. It's bunkum.

But @GasPanic when you say this, "To paraphrase, there is no point giving someone the power to change the future for the better if they don't understand what's wrong with the present."

How can you pare that with pensioners having the power to change the future while they are still clinging to the past? You've just got to look over the pond at that - the whole MAGA thing is trying to go back to an alleged 1950s-1960s utopia which never existed, and is incompatible with todays world.

Yes read back to post I’m replying to for context

They won’t get the vote from kids who had to leave private schools due to their class war. However, small are the numbers.

That's also not an obvious conclusion.

I don’t agree with it - 16 is still so immature, but Labour is introducing it (of course) because they think they’ll all vote Labour. So it’ll be interesting if a good many go for Reform…

However I dare say a good many will not be able to be arsed either to register to vote, or to bother to actually go and do it when it comes to the point.

Agree.

It was in the Labour manifesto. They got voted in to carry out their manifesto.