Opposing votes at 16 would cost Tories dear

Times

22-07-2025

I believed a lot of foolish things when I was 16 years old. And one of them was that voters were as politically engaged as I was. I should have realised this wasn't true. I was the only one in my class reading The Economist every week. And when, aged 11, I corrected my French teacher on some detail of the career of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, I sensed that even he thought I was an oddball.
But the penny didn't drop fully until I started going canvassing. I realised that there were plenty of voters who didn't know that the Tories and the Conservatives were the same party, or who the home secretary was, or what inflation meant.
So perhaps when I was 16 I might have found it convincing to argue that the voting age shouldn't be lowered, because young voters aren't well informed. Now I certainly do not. If a political literacy test were to be imposed before people were allowed to vote, let's just say that the impact on voter numbers would be alarming and the age spread of disqualified voters very wide.
This does not, of course, mean that it is impossible to think of strong arguments against the government's proposal to extend the franchise. There is, for instance, the practical objection that it will add more than a million economic dependants into the pool of voters, at a time when the efforts of earners are in danger of being overwhelmed by the demands put upon them. And this is linked to the more abstract argument that voting is a right belonging to those who have the experience and responsibilities of full citizenship, not all of which fall on those under the age of 18.
So, if the right decides to throw itself into opposition to votes for 16-year-olds, it will not be short of things to say. Nor will it lack public support. Most people think the reform is a bad idea and even those being given the vote are pretty much split down the middle on the subject. Nevertheless, I think anything more than token opposition would be inadvisable.
Let's start with this. The change is going to happen and opposition won't stop it. Labour has a huge majority and this isn't an issue that seriously divides the party. And once it happens it won't be reversed, either.
The argument that Labour is rigging future elections won't cut much ice with voters. First, they aren't that interested in what does or doesn't change election outcomes. At best, the discussion will produce a shrug, with voters a little irritated but not surprised that Labour is spending time on this rather than on things that more directly improve their lives.
Second, the rigging argument isn't really true. While Labour might hope this change will be of assistance to the party, it isn't clear that it will be. Once turnout is taken into account, the new group of voters is about 2 per cent of the electorate. Spread that around between the parties and it wouldn't have done much for Labour at the last election.
The polling research company More in Common looked at how the new voters would have impacted the 2024 result, using the crude but plausible assumption that 16 and 17-year-olds would have voted the same way as the 18 to 24-year-old group. Labour moved from 34.6 per cent to 34.8 per cent, the Tories from 24.4 to 24 per cent, the Liberal Democrats from 12.6 to 12.5 per cent, while Reform was unchanged.
This, of course, is looking backward. What about looking forward? Young people don't reliably support left-wing parties or positions. Instead, they tend to be more radical in their views, but that might be radical right. Young people in the United States, for instance, were always the group most in favour of the Vietnam War, even though they were the people who had to fight it. That is because they tend to be more sympathetic to violent solutions.
In Germany, young people swelled the voting total of the socialist left but also of the right-wing AfD. It is quite possible to imagine young people in Britain dividing on gender lines, with young men trending towards Reform and young women towards Jeremy Corbyn or the Greens. If Labour does see this as a move to rig the election then it is highly likely to be disappointed.
Indeed, in so far as these new young voters make a difference to the election outcome at all, it could be through social media campaigns favouring insurgents seeking to topple members of the government.
So even assuming that opposition could stop this change, which it can't, opponents wouldn't be denying Labour much of an advantage. Or indeed any advantage at all. And for this non-existent gain, opponents might well pay a long-term cost.
It is true that 16-year-olds may now be in two minds about having the vote. But I don't think they will always feel like that, nor will they always be 16. The Tories voted against the bill to create the NHS because doctors, through the British Medical Association, were opposed to it. They are still suffering politically for this, decades later, with doctors long having switched sides.
Once voting at 16 begins to seem natural, future generations will still be told who opposed it and it will remain a persistent handicap to winning the votes of that most vital of cohorts — people voting for the first time. People stay remarkably loyal to their first affiliation.
A much better response to this new group being added to the voting lists is to consider how best to serve them. The reason Martin Luther King gave so much of his attention to the voting rights of African-Americans is that he, correctly, thought that once they had the vote, politicians would pay attention to all the other disadvantages they suffered under. It would be good if this happened with young voters.
Polls consistently show how tempted young people are now by dictatorship, army rule and overthrowing the social order. Merely giving 16-year-olds the vote won't change this. But the expanded franchise could act as an added incentive to politicians to serve the interests of young people as assiduously as they now do the interests of pensioners. And that could do some good.
Politicians will be going into schools in future to sell themselves and their parties, and they will need to have something to say. So there will be increased competition on issues like tuition fees, climate change, employment opportunities, housing and public borrowing, and all sorts of other ways of serving the interests of these new voters.
Giving thought to this seems a better use of time and energy than digging in to oppose a change to the franchise that is going to happen anyway. Bashing one's head against a brick wall just seems pointless. It certainly does to me. After all, I'm not 16 any more.
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