Has Cameron opened the door to lowering the voting age to 16?

At 16 in the UK you can't own a credit card, gain a mortgage, drink, drive and numerous other things. By giving the vote on Scottish independence to 16 and 17 year olds has he opened the door for all UK residents of that age to vote in a general election. The future of the Uk is now in the hands of 126,000 stroppy teenagers.

As Scotland has its own parliament and makes different decisions from the rest of the UK on a number of issues, I don't accept the premise that lowering the voting age there means that it will happen here. However, I do accept that it increases the pressure for change.

My old hero Tony Benn supports lowering the voting age to 16 everywhere, and I agree with him. Those who leave school at 16 and get a job could be paying tax, and they're old enough to get married. At 17 they can join the forces and put their lives at risk for the country. They can also drive a car at 17 and put everyone's lives at risk, and that concerns me much more than whether they have the right to vote. Surely everyone arguing that 17-year-olds aren't mature enough to vote should be campaigning to get them off the roads?

In reality, I doubt whether many 16 and 17-year-olds would bother to vote. Those who are immature would probably decide that it's much too boring for them.

One good consequence would be a sudden revival of citizenship education in schools which has been sidelined and diluted in the league table age. It would become essential overnight. So would school councils. This could be a real driver of democratic and civic renewal, and give our stale parties and moribund political institutions a welcome shake-up.

When I were a lad, 21 was the age of responsibilty, so for me any further discussion is just numbers.

Attention needs also to be paid to the physiological reality that some races mature more rapidly, so that their marriageable age becomes and completes far earlier than may be experienced in other cultures.

Difrent strokes for difrent folks.

I agree with you OW, some people at the age of 16/17 do not know there butt from there elbow and your right different strokes for different folks, not all 16/17 year olds some of them are very mature for there age while others are more like 13/14 year olds in maturity.  I think it is too much too put on there shoulders not unless the schools bring in political classes to help them.

We keep kids immature; longer education, media influences, marketing to teenagers. What motivation do they have for learning about politics? Voting would provide this.

I have an Orwellian vision of a future in which Politicians have to appeal to 16-year olds for support, and will do it through twitter, face-book, text-messaging and you-tube. Television will be awash with 30-second clips in the style of the x-factor and come dancing. Voting will of course only be possible for those with access to an i phone5.

Historically we always see similar arguments advanced whenever extending the franchise is under consideration. Workers will elect demagogues (in fact many voted Tory), women will vote for feminist lunatics (many followed their husbands), 18 year olds will support silly parties (many voted Lib Dem so maybe that one did come true...) At present the biggest bloc of voters is set to be pensioners. Is this healthy for democracy? As a pensioner, often mixing with pensioners, I'd say not. As for our voting system, using Edwardian ballot boxes, and those appalling minit pop videos, the PPB's, bring on the digital age and 98% turnouts.

cybercheshired wrote:We keep kids immature; longer education, media influences, marketing to teenagers. What motivation do they have for learning about politics? Voting would provide this.

You still have to know what politics is all about, plus every party has different policies and they changed every time they publish there manifesto.

Sounds like a good basis for a revitalised citizenship curriculum.

cybercheshired wrote:Sounds like a good basis for a revitalised citizenship curriculum.

I agree with that suggestion no problem.

Labour to push for votes for 16-year-olds in EU referendum

From an article by Andrew Sparrow and Libby Brooks:-

The Labour Party plans to exploit the government’s relative weakness in the Commons and the Lords to try to ensure 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in the EU referendum. Cameron wants the electorate for the referendum to be essentially the same as for general elections, but Labour and the SNP have said they want 16- and 17-year-olds to be allowed to vote in the poll, which is due before the end of 2017.

A Labour source said that, given teenagers have a “tremendous vested interest in whether or not we stay in the EU or leave”, there could be a strong appetite for amending the EU referendum bill in the Lords, even if Labour and the SNP fail to recruit the relatively small number of Tory rebels they would need to defeat the government in the Commons.

Angus Robertson, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, said the referendum should follow “best practice” and this meant allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote. He said: “Young people are our future. It is their UK – and their Europe – so they must have their say”.

Polls suggest young people are much more likely to favour EU membership than the population at large. A recent YouGov survey found that, although the electorate overall favoured remaining in the EU by a margin of 10 points (45% for staying, 35% for leaving), among 18- to 24-year-olds the margin was 48 points (63% for staying, 15% for leaving).

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/24/labour-votes-for-16-year-olds-eu-referendum

tlttf wrote:At 16 in the UK you can't own a credit card, gain a mortgage, drink, drive and numerous other things. By giving the vote on Scottish independence to 16 and 17 year olds has he opened the door for all UK residents of that age to vote in a general election. The future of the Uk is now in the hands of 126,000 stroppy teenagers.

I'm sure that most stroppy 16 year olds will show a level of maturity greater than the brain dead morons who voted in a Tory government just over two weeks ago.

As if there weren't already enough allegations of paedophilia under investigation.

I agree LWS those that voted for another 5 years of cuts to welfare and public services they are the ones that are not old enough to vote. But come the 8th July they will find out exactly what they voted for when Gidiup the Idiot bgs his budget in anI think we willl be paying for the £8billion he promised to the NHS.

Every year I survive I grow more convinced that those a year younger than I am are too dim and inexperienced to vote. Why not let's demand the Queen's telegram, as a sensible qualification? On the other hand, it would have been nice if those who were to die in 1914-18 and 1939-46 had been asked their opinion first, I must admit.

Cameron's referendum on Brexit is already becoming mired in controversy over who may or may not be eligible to vote.

If the franchise is not to be based on the existing Electoral Roll they may as well toss a coin for it.

With reference to the forthcoming EU referendum, ‘a Number 10 source’ said: "This is a big decision for our country, one that is about the future of the United Kingdom”. Yes it is, but Cameron won’t allow 16- and 17-year olds - those with the biggest stake in the future – to take part.

Labour, plus the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, will table an amendment to the referendum bill that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote. Now that they’re not in a so-called coalition, the Tories no longer have a majority in the House of Lords. They could also face opposition in their own ranks in the House of Commons amongst some of their MPs who are now in favour of lowering the voting age.

Cameron will allow British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens over 18 who are resident in the UK to vote, along with UK nationals who have lived overseas for less than 15 years. Members of the House of Lords and Commonwealth citizens in Gibraltar will also be allowed to vote, and so will residents of Malta and Cyprus, but not migrants to the UK from other EU countries. An SNP MSP, Christian Allard, hit out at the rules after realising that he would not be allowed to have his say. Maybe the question we should be asking is why is Cameron allowed to make the rules on who can or can’t vote in this referendum, rather than say the Electoral Commission?

Some people are criticising Labour for “changing its stance” on the referendum. Well we didn’t want it, but it is going to happen, so the boneheads who want to leave the EU can hardly expect us to boycott the vote and allow blinkered ‘Little Englanders’ to take us out of the largest free trade area the world has ever seen. Sorry, I seem to be going off topic; this thread is about whether youngsters should be allowed to vote, and I think they should!

One other little point – Cameron has promised that the referendum will be held by the end of 2017 but the result will not be constitutionally binding. Make what you will of that!  

Some sources on this subject:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32872211

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-david-cameron-to-deny-under18s-and-european-union-nationals-the-chance-to-vote-10273781.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-david-camerons-rules-are-a-democratic-disgrace-says-frenchborn-scottish-politician-set-to-be-denied-a-vote-10274442.html

Does it even matter?

Logic might seem to suggest that voter eligibility should be restricted to those who voted in the previous referendum.

The United Kingdom joined the Common Market in 1973 under the Conservative Prime Minister, Ted Heath. Much of the Labour party had always been opposed to Britain's membership of the Common Market as they saw the organisation as too pro-business, so when Labour's Harold Wilson won the 1974 elections, the first ever referendum in Britain was held in 1975 after a lengthy and controversial campaign. The result was that the UK supported membership of the European Common Market.