Having lowered the voting age, the Labour Party unexpectedly lost the General Election of 1970, and it did not win a workable majority again for 27 years. It has not governed Scotland since before this month's 16 and even 18-year-old voters were born. It gave 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in Wales, where it has just come a very distant third.
But it has learned nothing. Of those who would vote at all, most 16 and 17-year-olds would vote Green or Nationalist, with enough in the right places for the new breed of Independents or for the Workers Party to be decisive against, for example, Wes Streeting, or Shabana Mahmood, or Jess Phillips. And most of the rest would vote for Reform UK or Restore Britain, which now have to decide whether or not to oppose a measure that was so strongly in their interest.
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