Thursday 24 January 2013

Votes For Adults

Today, the House of Commons passed a disastrous, even if non-binding, motion in favour of lowering the voting age to 16. Note that no such motion was ever passed while there was a Labour overall majority. Let battle commence.

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. Indeed, it is already starting in Scotland. Some 16 and 17-year-olds will have the vote. Which ones, exactly? And why, exactly?

Harold Wilson probably thought that he might gain some advantage from lowering the voting age. But in fact the Sixties Swingers hated him, and they handed the 1970 Election to Ted Heath. They did so to no one’s surprise more than Heath’s and his party’s, and they did so because, after Selsdon and all that, the Swingers 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 Conservative. By voting for Margaret Thatcher.

Ed Miliband blows hot and cold on this one. He should appeal directly to those who can and will vote by declaring his implacable opposition to it under any circumstance. Or he should get someone else to do so and keep his own counsel. As people who have fondly imagined this sort of Primrose Hill-ery to be the consensus within the Labour Party have found in the past, there is no shortage of people who would be more than happy to disabuse anyone of any such delusion.

12 comments:

  1. Why on Earth are you opposed to it?

    Lowering the voting age to 16 is a winner for the Left-there are hardly any conservative 16-year olds.

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  2. Where to begin, if you phrase it like that?

    Imagine if the Conservative Party really sold itself as libertarian. Then there are the Lib Dems. School mock elections in Scotland are almost always won by the SNP, hence Salmond's enthusiasm for votes at 16. An so on.

    As I have explained, the last lowering backfired badly in 1970. It is very, very telling that Labour never did this.

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  3. Oh yea, there are lots of 16-year old Tories-LOL (as they would say).

    But, yes, the Lib Dems would certainly benefit, and the Greens.

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  4. Indeed they would.

    And you are thinking of the 16-year-olds who wouldn't vote. I am thinking of the ones who would, not least because their parents would make them.

    We have been here before. Why do you think that Blair, especially, never did this? Why do you think that the first time that the Commons has ever voted for it has been today?

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  5. I think your problem is that your left-wing but not liberal Left.

    The Labour-supporting liberal Left (Owen Jones etc) are all over Twitter campaigning for this, because it would be great for them.

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  6. That is not David's "problem" Anon. @21:00. Whatever else it is, it is anything but a problem.

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  7. I have no problem with 16 year olds being allowed to vote. Perhaps it might help convince politicians that some people were born after 1970, & that their welfare might matter.

    To misquote Coolio~"Been livin' all my life in the middle of a boomer's pardise"

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  8. A reference which I get, but they would not. If this is about intergenerational strife, then they are not us.

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  9. They aren't us, but they aren't boomers either. Seeing as they are the ones having to pay off the debt, they may as well be voting for the people running it up.

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  10. Is it not a little bizarre that the politicians wish to lower the age for voting to 16, when also raising the school leaving age to 18? I presume that the reason for increasing the school leaving age to 18 is to better prepare youngsters for the adult world. Therefore, if the politicians feel that they are not ready for the cut and thrust of the outside world at 16 then why on earth are they considering giving them the vote? It seems to me that many politicians have the mental age of 16 in that their thought processes are not fully developed. Youngsters of the age of 16, being schoolCHILDREN have not had the opportunity to make any contribution to society, either financially, physically, or socially, and should not be given the vote until they are able to do so. Much growing up can be done between the ages of 16 and 18 and the current voting age of 18 is just about right. In any event, if you can join the forces and die for your country at age 18 then you are entitled to have some say in its government.
    To consider this about parties gaining votes is politics at it most shallow and shameful. This is a matter of national concern and the country would lose. If some politicians think that 16-year-olds should have the right to vote then would they be in favour of 16-year-olds being MPs? Actually, on reflection, it seems like this at PMQs.

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  11. Is it any worse to have the votes of sixteen year olds influenced by their modern studies teachers than to have the votes of those aged eighteen and over influenced by Rupert Murdoch?

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