Why does Keir Starmer want to give 16-year-olds the vote?

Photo by Steve Houghton-Burnett on Unsplash

The Labour Party’s long flirtation with extending the franchise to 16-year-olds smoulders on. As Starmer told this week’s Parliament Liaison Committee: “We will definitely get it done, it’s a manifesto commitment and we intend to honour it.” If true, this will be the largest change to the electorate since 1969 when the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18. It will mean around 1.5million potential voters being added to the electoral roll.

Seducing teenagers began when Labour was last in office. Back in 2007, Julie Morgan, then-MP for Cardiff North, used a Private Members’ Bill to suggest amendments to the Representation of the People Act which would lower the voting age. Despite receiving support from over 100 MPs, her Bill did not progress beyond a second reading.

But Labour’s ideas machine was not deterred. In 2023, its National Policy Forum came up with a pre-election pledge to introduce votes for 16- and 17-year-olds “so that young people feel empowered and can fully engage in our democratic processes.” This promise was reproduced in last year’s manifesto but did not make it as far as the King’s Speech.

By February this year, Starmer was back on board. Giving 16-year-olds the vote was crucial to restoring the “social contract” between Gen Z and Britain, he wrote in The Times. And now he’s at it again: “I think that if you’re old enough to go out to work, if you’re old enough to pay your taxes, then you are entitled to have a say on how your taxes are spent,” he told yesterday’s Liaison Committee.

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Far be it for me to deny teenagers the pleasure of a trip to the polling station. But there’s something decidedly odd about Labour’s pursuit of youth. For a start, this romance is entirely unrequited. History reminds us that extensions of the franchise have been hard won. Working class people who demanded the right to vote in early decades of the nineteenth century were not looked upon kindly. Neither were the suffragettes. Both groups fought lengthy, bloody battles for representation.

Yet there have been no mass demonstrations involving 16-year-olds marching on Westminster. Few teenagers have so much as generated a social media hashtag or a viral TikTok demanding the right to vote. The Labour Party has been doing all the running.

It’s worth asking why. It’s true that in the midst of economic woes, extending the franchise generates history-making headlines at minimal cost. But there’s more to Labour’s love affair with young voters than this.

Starmer’s reference to “restoring the social contract” with Gen Z is revealing. Unlike votes for women, or votes for the working class, there’s no suggestion that votes for teens will challenge the status quo. Quite the opposite. Labour’s determination to get young people voting seems to be a way of getting them to ‘buy-in’ to society as it is. The National Policy Forum’s desire for young people to ‘feel empowered’ likewise suggests it’s the warm glow of participation, rather than revolutionary change, the government is seeking.

The thing with 16-year-olds is that - some of them at least - can be quite biddable. In a pamphlet to accompany her 2007 Private Members’ Bill, Morgan explained that lowering the voting age would provide an opportunity to engage young people “while they are still likely to be in a formal education setting.” This presents voting as an extension to Citizenship classes or Personal, Social and Health Education. It suggests teens can be corralled to the ballot box by enthusiastic teachers and participation stickers. This seriously degrades our understanding of democracy. Yet votes for children is already a reality in the devolved administrations of Scotland and Wales.

Adulthood is also called into question with Labour’s proposal. Starmer talks of people ‘old enough to pay taxes’ but hardly any 16 and 17-year-olds have so much as a Saturday job nowadays. It was Labour that helped put an end to teenage employment. Back in 2008, just a year after failing to pass the Voting Age (Reduction) Bill, Labour introduced legislation to ensure young people stay in education or training until the age of 18. The current government has no plans to allow 16-year-olds to buy cigarettes, alcohol or fireworks. They cannot get a tattoo or place a bet. And yet they may soon be able to decide the future of the country. Make it make sense, as the kids say.

Labour may be seduced by Bertolt Brecht’s idea of dissolving the people and electing another but it should be careful. Young people themselves do not always comply. Indeed, polling suggests that young men in particular are attacted to Reform. Starmer might just come to regret unleashing 1.5million teenage rebels.

Originally published at The Spectator: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-does-keir-starmer-want-to-give-16-year-olds-the-vote/