Dr Phyllis Starkey was banging the drum at PMQs for votes at 16. But even a superbly well-educated 16-year-old is still a 16-year-old. Lowering the voting age even further would pose a very serious threat to democracy, since no one seriously imagines that the opinion of a 16-year-old matters as much as that of his Head Teacher, or his doctor, or his mother. So why, it would be asked unanswerably, should each of them have only as many votes as he had? Thus would the process start.
Harold Wilson probably thought that he might gain some advantage from lowering the voting age. But in fact the Sixties Swingers hated him, and handed the 1970 Election to Ted Heath, to no one’s surprise more than Heath’s and his party’s, because, after Selsdon and all that, they had thought that he was going to entrench economically their own moral, social and cultural irresponsibility and viciousness. As it turned out, they had to wait another nine years. But they did it in the end. By voting Tory.
The lesson should have been learned. The very young would not even vote for a party which had been in office a mere six years, a long time to them. So the extremely young are certainly never going to vote for a party which, by the time of the General Election, will have been in office since they themselves were a mere three years old.
Dr Starkey claimed that this should be done because the "democratically elected" Youth Parliament had decreed it. "Democratically elected" by whom, exactly? When these non-members, indeed non-voters, despoiled the Chamber with their presence, the most noticeable things other than their youth, which was to be expected, were how well-heeled they clearly were, also to be expected, and that, rather more surprisingly, they were all still fully dressed at that stage, if you didn't count those boys with no ties on. When and where were these "elections" held? And who paid for them?
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Lowering the voting age even further would pose a very serious threat to democracy, since no one seriously imagines that the opinion of a 16-year-old matters as much as that of his Head Teacher, or his doctor, or his mother. So why, it would be asked unanswerably, should each of them have only as many votes as he had? Thus would the process start.
ReplyDeleteSurely on this basis people would equally well argue that the opinion of an adult who left school at 16 did not matter as much as that of a university graduate? Or that the opinion of a person with an intellectual disability did not matter as much as that of a person without one? Yet nobody does argue this - or if they do, the law still gives each of these people one vote. Quite right too.
I don't support votes at 16, but this particular argument against them does not stand up.
"Surely on this basis people would equally well argue that the opinion of an adult who left school at 16 did not matter as much as that of a university graduate?"
ReplyDeleteNo. They have still lived that much.
I think you misunderstand the basis on which we grant the franchise in this country.
ReplyDeleteHow?
ReplyDeleteAh, the dear old votes at 16 lobby. Like the cannabis lobby (largely the same people, in fact), they assume that there is no other side, that we do not exist. The cannot cope when confronted with the fact that we do, never mind the fact that we predominate.