Labour accused of hypocrisy after raising age of party officials to 18
This week, the party's ruling body voted to raise the age at which party members could stand for key roles to 18, despite Sir Keir Starmer vowing to lower the voting age in general elections to 16.
The Prime Minister and Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, were both present at the party's National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting when the vote was passed. Ellie Reeves, Labour chairman, and Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, also attended the meeting.
The rule will require chairmen, vice-chairs, secretaries and treasurers of local Labour parties to be aged at least 18. The motion was carried overwhelmingly by 26 to 5 votes.
Ann Black, one of the NEC members present, said she had voted in favour of the motion because of the 'significant legal responsibilities' attached to the roles in question.
The Tories accused Labour of hypocrisy following the move, which they said appeared to run counter to its commitment to expand the franchise to younger voters.
A Conservative party spokesman said: 'As always with Labour it's one rule for them and another for everyone else.
'If they don't think 16-year-olds are old enough to vote, then why are they forcing it on the rest of the country?'
Sir Keir did not address the issue of votes at 16 when he spoke at the meeting. He instead spoke of the need to support the proscription of Palestine Action, claiming that the group had been responsible for the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses. He claimed the proscription was not stifling debate.
The NEC is made up of representatives from different parts of Labour and is intended to provide strategic direction to the party. It meets regularly to discuss the Government's progress and rule on administrative issues.
Early this year, the party stopped sharing regular updates on Labour membership figures with the NEC.
One NEC member told The Telegraph that the party leadership stopped sharing the data with the NEC because they were under no obligation to do so and that they did not want the information to be leaked.
Labour continues to share annual updates on its membership figures with the Electoral Commission, unlike some other parties.
Its membership has been falling for a number of years since its peak of 564,000 under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.
The latest available figure, from February of this year, showed that the party had 309,000 members.
Nigel Farage's Reform party has said its aim is to surpass the figure and thus become the largest political party in Britain.
Mr Corbyn hopes that his new party will syphon off hundreds of thousands of current and former Labour members who are disaffected with Sir Keir's leadership.
The former leader's new movement, with the placeholder name Your Party, already claims to have garnered 700,000 email registrations from members of the public expressing interest in joining.
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