Latest news with #general election
Sky News
6 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
Will extending the vote to 16-year-olds benefit Labour at the next general election?
Breaking down barriers to democratic participation, or electioneering that tilts the scales in the government's favour? Labour have announced plans to extend the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds in time for the next general election. The Greens, the Lib Dems and the SNP are in favour, but the Conservatives and Reform UK are not. If you look at the latest polling, and indeed historical polling, you might be able to work out why. A ballot of more than 22,000 under-18s, carried out prior to the 2024 general election, had the Greens in second place with the Conservatives in fifth. In the real election, the Conservatives ended up in second place, recording a vote share 15 points higher among the general population than they received among those not old enough to vote. The Greens, in contrast, ended up in fifth, with a vote share more than 20 points lower than that recorded in the youth poll. A year is a long time in politics, and Labour have slipped in popularity since that vote, while Reform have surged to a lead in recent polling. But not so among the youngest age group of currently eligible voters. Labour still lead with 18-24-year-olds, while Reform sit in fifth, according to the latest YouGov poll carried out for Sky News. Sky News election analyst Professor Will Jennings says there is no reason to expect that voting behaviour among 16 and 17-year-olds will be significantly different to those closest to them in age. "Young people tend to vote for parties of the left, but this change will not lead to a dramatic rebalancing of electoral power" Prof Will Jennings, Sky News election analyst Giving the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds has significant electoral implications, though the consequences may be overstated. As a group, young people tend to vote heavily for parties of the left - not just Labour, but also the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP in Scotland. In the 2024 general election, according to the British Election Study online panel, Labour secured 41% of the vote among 18-25s, with the Liberal Democrats on 17% and the Greens on 16%. The latest YouGov polling for Sky News puts Labour much more narrowly ahead of the Greens (by 28% to 26%) - a shift that highlights that the government cannot take the support of young people for granted. For both Reform UK and the Conservatives, young people are the group of voters where they have lowest support - compared to other age groups. One of the defining characteristics of young people is that they tend to turn out to vote at lower rates than older age groups. In recent elections the percentage of over-65s who have turned out to vote has been approximately 15-20% greater than the share of those aged between 18 and 25. Also, in terms of the UK's population 'pyramid' - generational differences in birth rates mean there are considerably fewer 16-year-olds than 50-year-olds (750,000 vs 900,000). Combined, this means that while the electorate at the next general election will now include a slightly more left-leaning demographic, this will not lead to a dramatic rebalancing of electoral power. Older voters continue to be a dominant part of the electorate and this change will only shift the dial a fraction in a leftward direction. How significant will their votes be at the general election? This is another question entirely. Adding 16 and 17-year-olds to the electorate only adds an extra 2.9% of potential votes. There are fewer 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK than there are people aged 60 or 61, or people aged 86+. That might still be enough to make an impact in some constituencies, but it's not enough to bring about any huge nationwide swings. The fact that it's only an extra 2.9% of "potential" votes is significant as well. Young people already turn out to vote at lower rates than older people. In 2024, people aged 65 or older were twice as likely to vote as someone aged between 18 and 24. And it doesn't look like 16 and 17-year-olds are about to buck that trend. A poll of 500 16 and 17-year-olds, carried out by Merlin Strategy this week on behalf of ITV News, found that only 18% said they would definitely vote if there was an election tomorrow, while 49% said they didn't think that they or their peers should be given the chance to vote at all. What's happened in other countries? We don't need to look too far for evidence on this. In fact, we can stay within the UK - Scotland gave the vote to 16-year-olds at the 2014 independence referendum and extended that for the 2016 and 2021 Scottish parliament elections. Analysis suggests that it has been successful at boosting electoral engagement in both the immediate and longer-term. At the 2014 referendum, voters aged 16 and 17 turned out in higher numbers than other young voters, albeit still at lower rates than the population at-large. And voters who were first eligible to vote at 16 also continued to vote in higher numbers than their slightly older peers in subsequent elections - according to joint research from the Universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh, and political participation think tank d-part. The Welsh government also extended the vote to 16-year-olds for the 2021 Senedd elections, while the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man have allowed 16-year-olds to vote in their assembly elections since before 2010. Globally, however, there are only seven sovereign nations that currently allow 16-year-olds to vote in national elections. Two are in Europe (Austria and Malta), while the remainder (Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua) are all in Latin America. The United Arab Emirates has the oldest voting age in the world, at 25, a full four years older than the next set of countries. The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Join the army, work full-time … and now vote: what 16-year-olds can do in the UK
Turning 16 opens up a whole suite of exciting new freedoms. Now, those celebrating their baby steps into adulthood in the UK have another thrilling task for their to-do lists: heading to the voting booth. Thursday marked one of the largest changes to the country's democratic system in recent times after Labour announced the voting age would be lowered to 16 before the next general election. Scotland and Wales have already made the change for Holyrood and Senedd elections, as well as local council elections, but the move means 16-year-olds will have a say over who becomes prime minister for the first time. For some, the change has been a long time coming, especially considering what 16-year-olds can already legally do: Those aged 16 and 17 can join the British army as a junior soldier, where they will learn survival skills including handling and firing weapons. They earn above minimum wage for their age group, with monthly pay starting between £1,500 and £1,800. Accommodation and other bills are paid for. For some people, ringing in the 16th year is accompanied with bottles of suspiciously cheap booze and a raging house party. However, for those who want to stay out of trouble but still fancy a tipple, a pub under the watchful eye of an adult may be the best setup. It is against the law to buy alcohol or drink it in licensed premises alone but, if you are 16 or 17 and accompanied by an adult, you can drink beer, wine or cider with a meal. The drink must be bought by someone over 18. Although unable to buy it, 16- and 17-year-olds can legally serve alcohol in a restaurant. The late teens are often a time when youngsters make impulsive decisions they later regret. Ill-fated tattoos, questionable fashion choices and horrible music tastes all fit the bill, but some changes are harder to reverse. Sixteen-year-olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland can legally change their names. All it takes is a dare gone wrong or a deluded belief that a nickname will still sound cool at 50 to take the plunge. Youngsters in Scotland have to wait until they turn 18 for the privilege. The days of stretching out lunch money or hoarding birthday cash to buy a pair of new trainers are gone. At 16 you can work most full-time jobs. You can also open a bank account on your own, meaning you can keep your parents' noses out of your financial affairs. Don't disregard their advice altogether, however. They're right sometimes.
The Guardian
12-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Starmer and Reeves promised honesty about public finances. Can they stay the course?
During the first televised debate in the run-up to last summer's general election, Keir Starmer used a phrase that received enthusiastic – and unanticipated – applause from the Salford audience. 'I don't pretend there's a magic wand that will fix everything overnight,' he told them. Labour strategists were surprised by the clapping, and encouraged him to deploy the line again in future. The prime minister, his aides said, entered office determined not to fall into the same trap as many leaders before him of making promises that were never going to be kept because of the state of the public finances. For her part, Rachel Reeves arrived at the Treasury intent on hammering home the message the Tories were to blame for the sorry state of the nation's books. Her downbeat statement to MPs last July, in which she slashed the winter fuel allowance, zeroed in on the immediate 'black hole' left by Jeremy Hunt. 'This level of overspend is not sustainable. Left unchecked, it is a risk to economic stability,' she warned. A month later, Starmer's gloom-laden speech in the Downing Street garden underlined the government's economic pessimism. 'I have to be honest with you: things are worse than we ever imagined,' he said. Somewhere along the way, the determination to be brutally honest with the public, come what may, has been knocked off course. Some inside government are worried that Starmer – in the face of slumping poll ratings – may have lost his nerve. Ministers argued that winter fuel payments were not sustainable, but then reversed cuts after poor local election results. They emphasised the fiscal advantages of disability benefit changes, and consequently lost the support of their own MPs. But as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) made starkly clear this week, there are also intense pressures on the public finances over the longer term, including the inexorable rise in the cost of state pensions. Richard Hughes, the OBR chair, stressed this was due to the design of the triple lock policy, as well as the UK's ageing society. 'The UK public finances are in an unsustainable position in the long run. The UK cannot afford the array of promises that it has made to the public,' he warned. In her Mansion House speech next week, the chancellor will address the OBR report and again point the finger of blame at the Tories, with national debt at a historic high – the UK spends more than £100bn a year on debt interest – and interest rates still recovering from Liz Truss's mini-budget. She will argue that there is 'nothing progressive' about having higher debt, Treasury sources said. With more borrowing off the table, and the government opposed to further austerity, that leaves tax. The chancellor is widely expected to put up taxes in her autumn budget, potentially by freezing income tax thresholds once again. 'All governments … come to each budget as an individual set of choices, almost forgetting what happened last year and without setting a direction for the future,' Paul Johnson, the outgoing director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the BBC's Week in Westminster programme. 'I slightly worry that we're in the same sort of place with this government. It feels like we're going to get another set of tactical decisions to respond to whatever this year's fiscal situation is.' Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, said that despite the ferocity of the rows over tax and spending over the past 12 months, politicians had not confronted a fundamental question. 'We're not really having a big debate about the fact that the state's got a lot bigger than it was before the pandemic. Does the country want to pay for that with higher taxes, or make it smaller again?' She said the trade-offs faced by Reeves and her predecessors had been exacerbated by the continued weakness of the UK economy after a series of shocks – the global financial crash, the pandemic and the energy crisis sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 'Fundamentally, it comes from this lack of growth in the economy. Growth has been disappointing since 2010, and we haven't really faced up to whether that just means that we're poorer as a country.' The latest growth figures, showing that Britain's economy unexpectedly shrank in May, underline the point. It is felt most in people's pockets: wages have stagnated for much of the last decade. 'There's a reason the electorate is concerned about this, which is that they've had 15 years without a pay rise effectively. This is the consequence,' Johnson said. 'It's a zero-sum game when you don't have growth. More money for one group of people means less money for another. The rhetoric of this government is right: growth, growth, growth. Without growth, we are stuck in that doom loop.' Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said: 'Whenever you look at the polling on this, the immediate reaction is to become profoundly depressed and somewhat more sympathetic towards the plight of politicians. 'Because what people will tell pollsters, over and over again, is that they want more money spent on the things they like and they don't want their taxes to go up, and that someone they don't like should pay for it.' Labour is still hoping for a bounce in growth that would ease the pressures on the public finances – but a year in, and with a crunch budget looming in the autumn, it has not materialised yet. Neither have they taken either of the two potential pivot points – Donald Trump's trade tariffs or increased defence spending – that would have allowed them to take a tougher message to the public on the economic realities. Government sources, however, defend the decision to stick to Reeves's self-imposed fiscal rules. 'They're purposely designed to get the public finances on to a sustainable footing. They're not self-imposed, they're cold economic reality,' one said. 'We've been honest that the public finances need to improve. We've taken some significant steps. Has that been pain-free? No. We're having to get a grip on day-to-day spending, saying no. That's not shirking away from the challenge, that's grabbing it.'
