Latest news with #AngelaRayner
Gulf Insider
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Gulf Insider
UK To Lower Voting Age To 16, But Could Plans End Up Backfiring?
Britain's left-wing Labour government has announced plans to lower the voting age in time for the next U.K. general election, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in what it described as sweeping electoral reforms to 'modernize democracy.' Ministers say the move is designed to rebuild public trust, but critics have accused the government of trying to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor, with recent polling suggesting Labour would benefit from a third of the votes. The voting age reform is part of a broader Elections Bill that will also ease voter ID rules by allowing bank cards as accepted identification and introduce tougher regulations on foreign donations, campaigner abuse, and digital voter registration. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said the plan would 'break down barriers to participation' and deliver on Labour's manifesto promise to extend the vote to young people who already 'work, pay taxes, and serve in the military.' Minister for Democracy Rushanara Ali called it a 'generational step forward.' But Nigel Farage, leader of Reform U.K., responded: 'I'm not in favor of it, but I'm really encouraged by the number of young people that are coming towards us. It's an attempt to rig the political system, but we intend to give them a nasty surprise.' Polling by Merlin Strategy suggests the issue is divisive even among teenagers. Of 500 16- and 17-year-olds surveyed, 49 percent said they did not believe they should be allowed to vote, while 51 percent supported the move. When asked how they would vote, 33 percent backed Labour, but Reform U.K. came in second with 20 percent. Only 10 percent of respondents said they would vote Conservative. BREAKING: The UK is set to lower the voting age to 16 in landmark electoral "Just when you think things couldn't get any worse… we're going to let kids vote over who runs the country – completely and utterly insane!"@JuliaHB1 — Talk (@TalkTV) July 17, 2025 Shadow Communities Secretary Kevin Hollinrake told the Daily Mail the move risks undermining democracy: 'Even 16- and 17-year-olds don't think they're ready to vote. With only 18 percent saying they'd definitely take part in an election, it's clear this is more about politics than principle.' Former editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, was blunter: 'In a desperate attempt to find anybody to vote Labour, Angela Rayner has announced 16-year-olds can vote. At 16, they know nothing of life and finance and therefore make great socialist fodder.' In a desperate attempt to find anybody to vote Labour Angela Rayner has announced 16-year-olds can vote at the next General Election. At 16 they know nothing of life and finance and therefore make great socialist fodder. Older voters sick of subsidising teenagers born with their… — Kelvin MacKenzie (@kelvmackenzie) July 17, 2025 In a European context, the U.K. now joins Austria and Malta in allowing 16-year-olds to vote in all elections. Germany, Wales, and Scotland permit voting at 16 for local or regional elections, but most European countries still set the national voting age at 18. The move could backfire for the Labour government. Just 43 percent of young people are supportive of the two legacy parties in Britain, Labour and the Conservatives, with the data suggesting they are sympathetic to left and right-wing causes. With talk of a potential splinter party from Labour in the pipeline being set up by far-left MPs Zara Sultana and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the indisputable success Reform U.K. had at the last general election through its use of social media targeting young people, Keir Starmer's party could find itself being squeezed from both sides.
The Star
8 hours ago
- Politics
- The Star
The UK plans to lower the voting age to 16. Here's what to know
2029 voters?: In a few years, these students can already leave school, work, pay taxes and join the military, so why not vote, the British government poses. — Agencies THE British government said last Thursday that it would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, in what it described as a landmark moment for democracy and some of its opponents decried as an attempt to tilt the electoral playing field. Analysts have described the plan as the country's largest expansion of voting rights in decades. The last nationwide reduction in voting age, to 18 from 21, came more than 50 years ago. 'Declining trust in our institutions and democracy itself has become critical, but it is the responsibility of government to turn this around and renew our democracy, just as generations have done before us,' the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, wrote in an introduction to a policy paper that included the announcement. The plan also includes promises to tighten laws on foreign donations to political parties and to simplify voter registration. Here's what to know about the change and its implications. > Do many places give 16-year-olds the vote? Several nations do, including Austria, Malta and Brazil, while in Greece the voting age is set at 17. Others allow 16-year-olds to participate only in some elections: In Germany and Belgium, they can help choose members of the European Parliament, but they cannot vote in federal elections. Britain has been in that category: Elections for the separate parliaments that control many policy areas in Scotland and Wales already had a voting age of 16. > Is this change a surprise? No. The center-left Labour Party has backed votes for 16-year-olds for some time, and the idea was part of the official platform on which it won last year's general election. > Will it definitely happen? How long will it take? The move requires a law, which will have to get through both houses of Parliament, so this change is some way off. But Labour has a large majority in the elected House of Commons, and the appointed House of Lords traditionally restrains itself from interfering with election promises. There's plenty of time, too: The next general election is not expected until 2029. > Is 16 a standard age limit in Britain? The government points out that 16-year-olds in Britain can leave school, work, pay taxes and join the military. Critics of the voting age change note that 18 is the legal minimum age to run as a candidate in an election, to take part in armed combat in the military, to marry and to buy alcohol or a lottery ticket. > Does Britain need to worry about participation in elections? There are some worrying signs. Turnout at the 2024 general election was 59.7% – the lowest since 2001 and 7.6 percentage points lower than in the previous general election in 2019. 'Our democracy is in crisis, and we risk reaching a tipping point where politics loses its legitimacy. The government has clearly heard these alarm bells,' said Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research. > Who would 16-year-olds vote for? Polls in Britain have long showed younger voters skewing left. So Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hope that his center-left party benefits – while the Greens might also expect a lift. Paul Holmes, a senior lawmaker for the main opposition Conservative Party, described the plans as a 'brazen attempt by the Labour Party, whose unpopularity is scaring them into making major constitutional changes without consultation.' But some recent polling has found growing support among young people for Reform UK, a new right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage that is strongly anti-immigration. One survey earlier this year showed almost 1 in 5 of 18-to-24-year-olds favoured Reform, although Labour was still ahead with this age group. Far-right parties in some other European countries, notably France, have claimed growing support among young people. Also worth noting: The last cut in voting age, in 1969, was also implemented by a Labour government – which then lost the subsequent election. > How else could the plans increase voter participation? The government says it will create a more automated voter registration system, reducing the need to provide personal details to access different government services. It will also expand the range of documents that voters can use as proof of identity to include payment cards issued by British banks. > Why does the government want to restrict foreign political donations? There was speculation late last year that technology billionaire Elon Musk might donate to Reform UK, though he then cooled on Farage. But that episode raised concerns with some lawmakers about foreign interference in British elections. In the proposals outlined Thursday, the government said it would tighten checks on some donations and prevent a foreign donor from setting up a shell company in Britain to channel cash to a political party. — ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Daily Mail
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
DAN HODGES: Keir Starmer's delusional if he thinks his morally bankrupt plan to let 16-year-olds vote will help him out. They'll NEVER vote for him
It goes without saying that the Government's move to hand the vote to 16-year-olds is intellectually and morally bankrupt. You can determine the legal speed limit. But you aren't actually deemed mature enough to get behind the wheel yourself. You can endorse sending British troops off to fight in a foreign war. But you're not perceived to have sufficient discipline or self-control to join them. You can't be trusted to buy alcohol, get married or own a credit card. But you can help determine the political direction of Britain for half a decade. To be fair, nobody ever seriously pretended there was some great civic imperative behind the change. Angela Rayner made a half-decent fist of it when she claimed: 'For too long public trust in our democracy has been damaged and faith in our institutions has been allowed to decline. We are taking action to break down barriers to participation that will ensure more people have the opportunity to engage in UK democracy.'
The Independent
19 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
I'm against votes at 16, but this is how I could be persuaded
If I were making the case for votes at 16, I would say that taking part in democracy is so important that people should be encouraged to do it early. I would say that voting is different from other things that people do, and that taking part can help to prepare young people for the responsibilities of citizenship. Instead, we tend to get a lot of false arguments about the other things that 16-year-olds can do and a rhetorical question: why shouldn't they be allowed to vote too? Thus on Thursday, when Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, published the government's plan to reduce the voting age, she said that '16- and 17-year-olds can work, pay tax and serve in the military'. Each of those actually undermines her case. They can work, but 14-year-olds can work part-time and it is government policy that 16- and 17-year-olds should be in education or training. You can pay income tax at any age. And though you can join the armed forces, you may not serve in a combat role. In an article in The Times, Rayner went further and said that you can be married at 16. Like most people, she was unaware that the law in England and Wales was changed two years ago, raising the age to 18. The article was quietly corrected. That mistake is the problem in a nutshell. At a time when age thresholds are generally being raised, advocates of votes at 16 have to explain why voting is different from most other things, not why it is the same. In recent years, the age at which young people can get a tattoo or buy superglue, fireworks or cigarettes has been raised to 18. The question is: why should voting be in the smaller category of things you can do at 16 rather than in the larger category of things that adults are allowed to do? I think that voting should be part of adulthood, but I don't feel strongly about it, and I could be persuaded that a special case should be made for a lower age, as it is for sex, medical treatment and driving. But the advocates of child voting really need to up their game. To be fair, Rayner did also make the better argument on Thursday: 'By engaging voters early, when they are young, and allowing them to have a say in shaping their future, we will build the foundations for their lifelong participation in our electoral processes.' There is some evidence for this. A Scottish study found that after the voting age was reduced for everything except UK parliament elections, that cohort 'continued to turn out in higher numbers, even into their twenties, than young people who attained the right to vote later, at age 18'. There are other ways of raising turnout. I am opposed to compulsory voting in principle – part of the point of voting is that it is a voluntary act – but I think that a small cash incentive for first-time voters is a good idea. Other studies have shown that 'voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future'. And if a lower voting age does have a lasting effect in increasing engagement then there is no harm in doing that too. My other objection to votes at 16, however, is the suspicion that it is being done for party advantage. That was plainly the case in Scotland, where David Cameron foolishly allowed Alex Salmond to expand the franchise in order to boost the separatist vote in the 2014 referendum. Cameron's strategy seemed plausible: let the Scottish National Party choose the franchise, the date and the question, and then there could be no argument about the result. Like as if. Equally, Rayner's high-sounding arguments of principle are undermined by the knowledge that there are votes in it for her. The effects of the change are likely to be small. One poll this month, by Focaldata, suggested Labour and the Greens would gain 0.2 percentage points each, at the expense of Reform, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. But it still stinks. Yes, it was in Labour's manifesto last year, which even used the good argument rather than the bad: 'We will increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy, by giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in all elections.' That is the correct procedure in a parliamentary democracy: you put it in the manifesto, get elected and enact it in law. But there is an argument that constitutional questions should be treated differently: that is why we had a referendum on changing the voting system in 2011. And Labour ought to worry that in one list of manifesto policies polled it was the only one that more people opposed than supported. That is the clincher for me. I am persuaded that it is good for young people to be engaged in politics. I could accept that Labour is entitled to act in its self-interest, having won a mandate for that explicit policy in the general election, if there was overwhelming support for it. But there is not, not even among 16- and 17-year-olds. So, I realise that it is going to happen, and that it won't be reversed once it has happened, but I wish Labour would drop the nonsense about serving in the military and make a better case of democratic principle.
Spectator
a day ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Why shouldn't 16 year olds get the vote?
On 18 September 2014, Scotland went to the polls to decide its future in the United Kingdom. While the outcome was decisive – 55 per cent of voters couldn't bring themselves to back independence – the turnout for the poll, at 85 per cent, was one of the highest recorded in Britain. The significance of the 'one-off' vote (plus anxieties on either side of the debate about the outcome coming down to the wire) saw full-throated campaign efforts deliver a swathe of voters to polling stations. A number of these were under 18-years-old, including me – with my birthday falling just six days before the poll. It was the 2012 Edinburgh Agreement that allowed the Scottish parliament to choose who could vote in an independence referendum. Using temporary powers under the Scotland Act, the Scottish government extended the say to 16- and 17-year olds – and subsequently over 100,000 under-18s registered to vote. The argument put forward by the SNP was similar to that of Labour's Angela Rayner on Thursday: the decision is good for democracy and gets young people excited about politics. And the same criticisms were levelled at the Scottish government as the UK one: that the move was more about party politics than progress. History has demonstrated how expanding the vote is hardly the most effective form of gerrymandering: while the SNP expected younger voters to be more open to the idea of independence, Scottish Referendum Study analysis showed that 54 per cent of 16-19-year-olds voted 'no'. The BBC described the union-backing bloc at the time as an 'unusual alliance' of 'average earners, Protestants and women'. Labour should take heed: currently polling suggests that while younger voters would tend to lean left, there is a significant proportion of young people – generally men – attracted by the straight-talking, anti-establishment rhetoric of Reform. As More in Common pollster Luke Tryl pointed out on Friday's Coffee House Shots, the voting reform doesn't make it much more obvious who would win the next general election at this point. What it does signal is yet more bad news for the Conservatives, who poll in the single figures among young people. But there is a case to be made for extending the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, particularly at a point when trust in politicians is at an all-time low and people across the country are increasingly disillusioned by and disengaging from national politics. Research by academics from both Edinburgh and Sheffield University after the 2014 poll found that not only do 16- and 17-year-olds tend to vote more frequently than their slightly older peers who got the vote at 18, they maintain these voting habits for longer – usurping the turnout dip that was once common among the early adult age group. 'If you give people the right to vote earlier in life, they appear more likely to make voting a habit,' the researchers noted. Polling company FocalData conducted research in conjunction with work done by former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown on the state of social cohesion in Britain. The findings are stark: nine in ten people said they had less than five close friends, while 16 per cent admitted they had no friends at all. Looking at Gen Z more specifically, YouGov noted in February this year that only 15 per cent of young people feel they live in a united country. Communities – and generations – look increasingly fragmented in the UK and a kind of local-level protectionism is being bred, as economic pressures tied into the cost of living crisis and housing shortage remain a feature of public life. People are growing less interested in each other and more disillusioned by the state of the country. Of course the simple fact of giving young people a vote wouldn't sort all this out – but the triple shot of getting people interested in political policies from an early age, increasing turnout and, crucially, maintaining that increase in engagement ensures more people are actively invested in the country's future. That cannot be a bad thing. Why is this important? Recent elections have seen more and more people turn off from mainstream politics – indeed, Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party won its supermajority on a very thin share of the vote, with only 38 per cent of Brits backing them. They've only had a year in power but already their legitimacy has been challenged as a result – as much internally as externally. Awareness of the vote share (and indeed low turnout) has created an atmosphere of awkwardness. As one Labour grandee remarked to me recently: 'There is a bashfulness about our success.' It sums up the degree to which this realisation has undermined the confidence of the party leadership, with MPs acknowledging the government hasn't exploited its supermajority to its fullest potential. And now that backbenchers are growing increasingly vocal – and disruptive – it seems unlikely Labour ever will. Parties would do well to better consider how to speak to a cohort of people that will shortly make up the bulk of the country's workforce, especially if various reforms – that are hard sells in the short term but beneficial down the line – are to be pulled off. Starmer's biggest U-turns during his first year in office show a government allowing non-workers to dictate policy: from the winter fuel payment cut reversal to the rowback on disability benefits. Long overdue conversations about issues like the pension triple lock tend to be avoided thanks to fears about losing the silver vote. While allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to head to the ballot box isn't going to radically dent the impact of the pensioner class, it provides an additional opportunity for parties to consider how to get young people on side – and stick with them over the course of their voting careers. There are numerous counterpoints: for example, if 16- and 17-year-olds can't, in England, do things like get married or drink alcohol, they shouldn't be allowed to vote. (You could argue it seems strange to shower a person with a whole host of new liberties at any one age.) And there is a certain sneeriness from older generations about the intellectual capacity of teens now – perhaps a rattled awareness that they too were the future once. But this ignores a number of responsibilities that already rest with young people: it is at this age that you are expected to figure out what you want to do with your life – what to study at university, or which apprenticeships or jobs to apply for. And it's often at this age that students are at their most curious. I remember the buzz around school when the independence election approached – friends who had never so much as talked about the news before were discussing things like the future of Trident (we were only a few miles down the road from Faslane), our reliance on oil and gas and even questions of cultural identity. It didn't split people down partisan lines; it persuaded us not only to voice our opinions but appreciate that they carried weight. And, vitally, it encouraged more people to get involved. The government's latest move doesn't quite deserve the criticism that has been thrown its way.
