Starmer should never lower the voting age – we’re all extremists at 16

Idealism is admirable and appropriate for young people, but let’s keep it away from the ballot box

The passion and idealism of youth can be a beautiful thing. For some teenagers and young adults, attaching yourself like a pilot fish to some great cause is a formative rite of passage. 
The downside is that when you inject that idealism into mainstream politics it tends to become extremism. That’s because, in one way or another, all teenagers are extremists. It’s tempting to wonder if this has dawned on Sir Keir Starmer too, since his party’s manifesto pledge to reduce the voting age to 16 was absent from the King’s Speech. 
When asked if the idea would return before the next general election, the Commons leader Lucy Powell said: “I hope so. That’s the intention.” It’s heartening to see the word “intention” used in this context, since it’s invariably code for “no”. As so often, the long grass of electoral reform is where good intentions go to die. 
Young minds can’t simply be co-opted for Labour because Labour is the establishment. Younger voters are less likely to become engaged with the kind of politics “you” want them to and are more likely to lean towards extremism in one form or another. It’s how they’re wired. 
When I was 16, I probably would have voted for anyone for any reason: because they promised world peace; because they promised to pay my university fees; because a girl I liked told me to. In my own daughter’s school, a mock general election saw almost all the girls vote for a hard-Left local independent, while almost all the boys voted for Reform, primarily because they thought it was naughty and it would infuriate the teachers.
Labour’s pledge would unleash more than 1.5 million extra voters who won’t do as they are told. This seems a particular problem for the three biggest parties. The Greens would probably benefit most from lowering the voting age, along with the charming Islamists who have appeared like cuckoos in their nest. A warning comes from Germany, where 16- and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote in June’s European elections – a move supported by the Left – and 16 per cent of voters under 24 opted for the hard-Right AfD, tripling their share of that demographic.
Take the activist group Youth Demand, which sounds like something Rik from The Young Ones came up with: “Thatcher, we’re Youth Demand and we’ve got a bomb!”. It’s a needy name for a needy age. This is all part of the “omnicause”, of course, that catch-all collective who gather up their favourite disparate narratives then look for specious ways to connect them into a single world view.
It’s no surprise that, as with the likes of Fossil Free Books and Queers for Palestine, the three-headed hydra for Youth Demand features fossil fuels, Israel and gender-critical feminists. At least being motivated to protest against climate change makes some sense, even if the ways in which it is conducted are self-indulgent, childish and usually counterproductive. The mother of the 22-year-old Cressida Gethin, a Just Stop Oil activist who was jailed for four years for her part in disruptive M25 protests, asked for her to be given a day’s release from prison to attend her brother’s wedding. 
It was not uncharitably pointed out that her actions caused thousands of people to miss flights, funerals, exams and medical appointments, along with an estimated 50,000 hours of delay. The phrase “I blame the parents” was muttered over a million bowls of cornflakes. 
Youth Demand has the same ring as Age Concern – like it’s just something you do at that stage of life. I’m starting my own activist group called Middle-Age Exhaustion, which advocates for a cut in tax on rosé and slightly earlier bedtimes. Youth Demand was responsible for painting “180,000 killed” below the Cenotaph two weeks ago, a figure lifted from a dubious letter published by The Lancet which speculated on what the death toll in Gaza “could” one day reach. It was the perfect example of performative action first, facts second (or last).
A recent survey revealed 54 per cent of 18-24-year-olds agreed with the statement “the state of Israel should not exist”. The prevailing youth culture, from university campus to secondary school playgrounds, is binary. Who to side with depends on an ideological soup of post-colonial theory and highly suspect historical cherry-picking. This goes beyond ignorance and into the realms of pure fashion. As for the history of Israel and Palestine, the facts are irrelevant. There is no room for knowledge or doubt – it’s as if Hamas and the IDF are merely rival football teams to be cheered or booed.
The other reason we shouldn’t listen to 16- and 17-year-olds is that aside from a hardcore of fiery-eyed dreamers, the vast majority of them don’t give a hoot and wouldn’t vote anyway. That is a form of extremism too. If nearly half the country were so apathetic that they couldn’t be bothered to vote this year, how much greater a percentage of its teenagers – a constituency known for dank, stinky bedrooms, hanging around in parks and dodging homework – would be stirred by a concept as lame as “political engagement”. Lowering the voting age would only encourage even more people not to vote. 
It sounds dispiriting, but not necessarily. Teenagers need time to learn from life, love and adulthood and form their opinions accordingly. Idealism is admirable and appropriate for young people, but let’s keep it away from the ballot box. The system isn’t just there to wear down your principles and make everyone cynical old farts. It’s also there to protect society and keep it stable. Getting the balance right between embracing bold new ideas and protecting decent old ones is the tricky bit. If young people are either crazed zealots or disengaged from mainstream politics, then we can always blame the parents. But perhaps it is just better left that way.