Peter Moore: Should kids really have the vote?

I must have been a bit of a geek at school. 

I followed politics, although my grandchildren probably think it was Gladstone and Disraeli.  I was never party political. I simply wanted to know how the system worked and follow the soap opera of party politics. 

In the sixth form when I was seventeen the school arranged a trip to the House of Commons to include a tour and then an opportunity to meet our MP. This sounded fascinating.

When we arrived we were shown around Parliament with a guide who also discussed how the system worked and the history.  We were then taken onto the balcony to meet the MP. He arrived, asked the teacher where to stand for the photo, smiled for the camera and then disappeared without even saying hello to the students. Before anyone tries to guess the MP I was not living the Devon at the time. The following week there was a photo in the local paper of the smiling MP claiming that he had met student from the local school. 

I was annoyed but later two important political facts were pointed out to me. First, it was a very save constituency. A chimpanzee could have been elected if he stood for the right party, although I wondered whether a chimp might have been more friendly. Also, the voting age was twenty-one. We were not going to vote for four years so why bother?

This experience taught me to become a little more cynical about politics and politicians, although I have since learnt that not all MPs share this attitude. 

Would things have been different if the voting age had been sixteen, as proposed by the present government? 

In 1969 the voting age was dropped to eighteen. I was disappointed. By the time the law was changed, I was already twenty-one. 

When it was first suggested that sixteen years olds should have the vote I was dubious. My “eureka” moment came during the Brexit debate. I had seen several passionate discussions on television, all of which were emotional and preaching to the converted on both sides. There was no real debate. 

I then saw a debate from a school. It was the most informed and intelligent debate in the whole hustings. Both sides had done their homework, both sides listened to the other side and both sides tackled the arguments. Some even changed sides depending on the evidence. These students did not have the vote but would be more affected by Brexit than us older people.  

My other light bulb moment was when I realised how little most people who do vote know about politics. In “Pointless” on BBC in a survey of one hundred people over twenty percent had never heard of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. One politician found that when he first started canvassing he found some voter did not know that the Conservative Party are the same as the Tories. I should not be critical. I am boring and follow the reality TV programme of politics. Others follow the reality TV programme Love Island or Big Brother. I may know about different policies but have no idea about the characters on the Love Island. The only difference is that I do not vote on who should be evited from Big Brother. 

If sixteen-year-olds had the vote, even if some do not bother, politicians will have to think of younger people when working out policies. Currently, as older people vote, we have the triple lock on pensions and the winter fuel allowance. If young people vote would there be new policies on student loans and housing?

Will the youth vote change the outcome? This new group of voters are only 2% of the electorate. One study looked at how the result would have changed the 2024 election if the teenagers voted in the same way as the eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds. Labour would have moved from 34.6% to 34.8% and the conservative from 24.4% to 24%. So, no, it would probably not change the result. 

In a true democracy politicians should produce policies which take into account all generations. I am sure that no Torbay MP would ever ignore local students who have travelled to Parliament but, with the youth vote, even the dreadful MP of my youth might have at least said hello.