Voting at 16? Good idea, bad idea or Trojan Horse?

Both Labour and the Lib Dems have said that they favour lowering the voting age to 16. Why would they do that, I wonder, and is it a good idea?

My father used to say to me: “There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure”, but it was years later that I realised that it was actually a quote by William J. Durant, an American writer, historian, and philosopher.

He has a point, though, and this, I suspect, is at the back of the new-found zeal amongst the left for lowering the voting age. As I expect this election to show, each of these parties, for different reasons, has realised that they will be needing the votes of our impressionable youth in order to form a Government, and to help them remain in power for ever.

Anyone who has had any dealings with 16/17 year olds – and let’s face it, we’re all one at one stage in our lives – is terrified at the idea of allowing them a say in our electoral process. I’ll come clean here, I wish it were still 21; 18 year-olds are barely mature or responsible enough, and 16 year-olds not at all. Socialists must know this, so the only reasons they can have for wanting the age lowered are purely selfish ones.

Churchill is often misattributed as saying: “If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are still a socialist by the time you are 35, you have no head”, which is also, I think, part of the thinking behind this mad idea. It is, in my view, a naked and blatant attempt to tap into a rich resource of deluded, naive Socialist-leaning voters, and nothing more than that. It must be resisted at all costs.

During research for this article, I was amazed to find that there are actually organisations out there promoting this mad idea. One, Votes at 16 is tapping, very well, into the internet. There’s a press release on their site praising the inclusion of a pledge on Votes at 16 in the Labour Party’s 2010 election manifesto. It also points out that the Labour manifesto promises improved citizenship education for young people followed by a free vote in Parliament on reducing the voting age to 16.

Does that scare anyone? “improved citizenship education”? Is that another way of saying “indoctrination of our children by the State”? I think it is.

Jonathan Pyke, a Votes at 16 Coalition spokesperson said:

“We welcome the Labour party in joining other political parties, charities and young people themselves in support of votes at 16.”

“A majority of young people support lowering the voting age. Young people want to be heard, including at the ballot box.

I’ll bet “young people” support it, but that doesn’t mean they should be indulged.

Like most people I thought a right mish-mash of stuff when I was 16, was hugely opinionated about it, and like most people I grew up and realised what tosh it was. Today’s 16 year-olds are no different. They too think they know it all, but will grow up to realise they didn’t. We elders in Society have a responsibility to recognise that, and to help guide young people, not let them loose on things they can’t yet understand. To do otherwise is, in my view, irresponsible.

In the “Notes to editors” section, the Votes at 16 Press Release says this:

“Votes at 16 is party policy for the Liberal Democrats, Labour Party, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. ”

In February this year, in an article in the Telegraph, Gordon Brown is quoted as saying that he believed that the voting age should be lowered to 16 as part of a package of radical reforms to the electoral system.

Again in the Independent, in December 2003, Ben Russell writes:

“Matthew Green, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on young people, said: “Denying 16-year-olds the vote because some consider them politically immature is trite nonsense. If 16-year-olds can marry, have children of their own, pay taxes and join the Army, why should they not be able to vote for the Government they want. Tony Blair has moved from opposed to neutral on this issue. Now he needs to go the extra mile.”

But David Willetts, the shadow cabinet member responsible for Conservative policy development, told Sky News: “I think 18 has been a reasonable age; I don’t particularly see any need to lower it. It is important to engage younger people in the political process but I’m not sure lowering the age to 16 would be the right way.”

The common thread there is that Socialists are all in favour of it…

Are we to believe that this is because they all truly believe that your average 16 year-old has half a clue about the world, Society and politics in particular, and has a view so valuable that we need to make it count? Or are we cynics right, and see this as a selfish move to hoover up the votes of left-leaning misguided youths right after their “improved citizenship education”? I know which I think is the case…

There’s a good page on Wikipedia, which has this to say about the UK and voting at 16:

United Kingdom

The reduction of the voting age to 16 in the United Kingdom was first given serious consideration on 15 December 1999, when the House of Commons considered in Committee an amendment proposed by Simon Hughes to the Representation of the People Bill.[20] This represented the first occasion that the question of a voting age lower than 18 had ever been put to a vote in the Commons.[21] The Government opposed the amendment, and it was defeated by 434 votes to 36.[22]

The Votes at 16 coalition, a group of political and charitable organisations supporting a reduction of the voting age to 16, was launched on 29 January 2003.[23] At this time a Private Member’s Bill was also proposed in the House of Lords by Lord Lucas, and received a Second Reading on 9 January.[24]

In 2004 the Electoral Commission conducted a major consultation on the subject of the voting and candidacy ages, and received a significant response. In its conclusions it recommended that the voting age remain at 18.[25] On 29 November 2005 the House of Commons voted 136-128 (on a free vote) against a Bill for a reduction in the voting age to 16 proposed by Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams. Parliament chose not to include a provision reducing the voting age in the Electoral Administration Act during its passage in 2006.

On 27 February 2006 the report of the Power Inquiry called for a reduction of the voting age, and of the candidacy age for the House of Commons, to 16.[26] On the same day the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, indicated in an article in The Guardian that he favoured a reduction provided it was made concurrently with effective citizenship education.[27]

The Ministry of Justice published on 3 July 2007 a Green Paper entitled The Governance of Britain, in which it proposed the establishment of a “Youth Citizenship Commission”.[28] The Commission would, amongst other things, be tasked with examining the case for lowering the voting age. On launching the Paper the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said in the House of Commons: “Although the voting age has been 18 since 1969, it is right, as part of that debate, to examine, and hear from young people themselves, whether lowering that age would increase participation.”[29]

The Scottish National Party’s conference voted unanimously on 27 October 2007 for a policy of reducing the voting age to 16, as well as in favour of a campaign for the necessary power to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament.[30]

During the historic Youth Parliament debates of 30 October 2009 in the House of Commons, Votes at 16 was debated and was voted for overwhelmingly as a campaign priority and since that debate the issue has been raised in Prime Minister’s Questions and has also gained the wide spread support of the major political parties.

Ellie Levenson, a left-leaning journalist who has written for The Guardian, New Statesman and the Fabian Review, writing in the Independent on the subject in April 2004, starts her article thus:

“To be against lowering the voting age is seen by most progressives as symptomatic of losing one’s youth and gaining some grumpiness. So for a relatively young progressive such as myself to be against lowering the voting age – well, I might as well have said let’s abolish the vote altogether going by the looks I have received from many of my colleagues on the left.”

Quite, and as my research has shown, she is a fairly lone voice out there…

The whole article is worth a read, and I recommend readers do just that, but here’s a telling extract:

“This is a mistake, for two reasons. The first is that it is a simple case of ostrich head meets sand. Yes it is a sad fact that over 40 per cent of those eligible to vote in this country did not exercise their right to do so in the last general election. It’s generally agreed that this constitutes some kind of crisis of political engagement. However, by increasing the number of people eligible to vote you merely have the same percentage of a larger number of people not voting, or perhaps an even larger percentage of people not voting, as the youngest group of eligible voters usually has the lowest turnout.

But the second reason, and most important one, is that the majority of 16 year olds are just not responsible enough or mature enough to have the vote.”

Just in case anyone doubts the veracity of that last line, I suggest you watch the video below; it’s shocking. I’ve often said that half the people in this country are too stupid to be allowed to vote. Well, it seems that we’re breeding new ones as well, at least until they’ve had their “improved citizenship education” kindly provided by a Socialist Government… Enjoy: