WHEN polling day dawns at the next general election, some 1.6million new voters will have been added to the electoral roll.
Hundreds of thousands of bright-eyed 16 and 17-year-olds will be entitled to cast a vote for their local MP for the very first time, thanks to Labour plans announced yesterday.
AlamySome 1.6million new voters will have been added to the electoral rolls at the next general election[/caption]
GettyDeputy PM Angela Rayner is maddeningly wrong to think that under-18s should have a ‘ stake in our country’s future’[/caption]
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner says it will finally “give the young a stake in our country’s future”.
While she’s right to say those teenagers will have a say in our democracy, she is absolutely, profoundly and maddeningly wrong to think that they should.
Why? Because voting is something that adults get to do, and 16 and 17-year-olds are not adults, they’re children. It’s really that simple.
The Deputy PM claimed in a newspaper article that 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote because they can serve in the Armed Forces. This is not actually true.
Under-18s may join the military, but they can’t actually serve while under-age.
Indeed, we don’t trust 16 and 17-year-olds to do very much at all.
They can’t legally buy alcohol, or a packet of cigarettes or even a vape.
If we can’t trust them with a pint of lager, why on Earth would we trust them with a pencil in a polling booth?
We don’t trust under-18s to be able to watch violent movies at the cinema or pornography on their laptops.
The Online Safety Act bans under-18s from being able to look at explicit material on porn sites, while 16 and 17-year-olds can’t even be held fully accountable for any criminal offences they commit, no matter how serious.
Yes, a 17-year-old can legally drive a car but, judging by the accident statistics, they’re far more likely to kill themselves and others than any other drivers on the road.
And allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote would be an even bigger car crash.
Angela Rayner claims that many 16-year-olds are responsible beyond their years, working hard and paying tax, just as she was as a young mum at that age.
Apart from the 16 and 17-year-olds, of course, who are allowed to leave school at 16 but are still required by law to be in education or training until the age of 18.
Ruthless and cynical
Ah, but what about all the young people who work and pay tax before the age of 18? Shouldn’t they be allowed to vote?
Well, that’s pretty much every child who has ever saved up their pocket money to buy a new toy, because they pay 20 per cent VAT just like their parents.
Are we seriously saying seven-year-olds buying Barbie dolls or Lego should also get the vote? Of course not!
Let’s be honest, Labour’s bid to lower the voting age has nothing to do with a starry-eyed faith in the wisdom of youth or an ardent desire to broaden our democratic processes.
It’s all about a ruthless and cynical bid to stay in power.
After winning his loveless landslide last year, with less than 34 per cent of the vote, and his government plummeting in the polls, Sir Keir Starmer has given up all hope of winning the support of British adults.
Now he’s having to resort to winning over their kids with some blatant election gerrymandering.
When cynical politicians say they want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, what they really mean is that they want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote for them.
Sir Keir Starmer may find that extending votes to young teens could come back to bite him in the backside
Julia Hartley-Brewer
The PM knows that younger voters are more likely to support left-wing parties, so why not lower the voting age to benefit the Labour party?
After all, why wouldn’t children want to vote Labour after years of being indoctrinated by their teachers into green propaganda, trans ideology, welfare dependency and victimhood, pro-immigration and anti-Trump views, and a hard-left take on Britain’s history as a white supremacist colonial power responsible for every wrong in the world?
But Sir Keir Starmer may find that extending votes to young teens could come back to bite him in the backside, as many younger voters choose instead to turn to the more radical Greens or even Jeremy Corbyn’s new hard-left party instead of backing the Labour government.
They are just as likely to prefer Reform UK as the anti-Establishment party, following many young voters who are flocking to right-wing parties across Europe.
Labour may end up ruing the day they lowered the voting age to 16, but we will all have to live with the consequences of this cynical political tactic.
Giving children the vote proves beyond all doubt that, when it comes to British politics, the grown-ups are no longer in charge.
ED MILIBAND, Secretary of State for Climate Hysteria, took a break from proclaiming “The End Of The World is Nigh” to make the case for Net Zero this week.
After delivering an address to the Commons on climate change, he said “our British way of life is under threat” from it – and told Tory and Reform MPs they were “unpatriotic” for wanting to abandon Net Zero targets.
That’s quite a claim. But maybe not as extreme as that of Dale Vince, Labour donor and green energy millionaire, who wants “climate denial” to be a crime.
I’d have thought the REAL threat to the “British way of life” would be jailing those who wisely object to spending £1trillion of taxpayers’ money on targets that will make our country poorer and energy more expensive, while importing Chinese-made solar panels and turbines.
I guess the climate zealots prefer heatwave hysteria to cold hard facts.
WE’LL PAY FOR DATA SCANDAL
You’d think the thousands of Afghans set to sue the Government might be a tad grateful to have been brought to safety in the UK in clandestine flightsBBC
THE Afghan data leak and the Tory Government’s cover-up using a court super-injunction is a scandal from start to finish.
It could cost us dearly, paying for the fallout from the accidental email leaking a database of almost 19,000 Afghans and their families claiming to be at risk from the Taliban after British forces left.
An accidental email which we were not told about for two years. Yet it seems that everyone else – including the Taliban – DID know!
Meanwhile, ambulance-chasing lawyers have already lined up a thousand Afghans to sue the Government for putting their lives at risk.
You’d think that those Afghans might be a tad grateful to have been brought to safety in the UK in clandestine flights rather than left to rot under the Taliban, but apparently not.
Instead, they will be bringing a class action suit that could cost up to £1billion in compensation.
MPs are launching their own investigations, while newspapers are now finally free to hold ministers to account.
But whenever the Government makes a mistake, it is always the long-suffering taxpayer who has to pick up the bill.
Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
