Lowering the voting age

Just because your brain is in a stage of plasticity to my mind should'nt stop you from being able to vote, who you vote for isn't a permanent desicion, many people vote for different parties at every election. As for maturity I see many people my age and younger who I would consider to immature to vote, or frankly to stupid.

This bill was in the Labour manifesto, so they're fulfilling that pledge.

Farage has a huge following on tiktok so don't bet that all young people or even the majority are far left.

In my experience, the younger generation are far more right wing than most people realise, I think this will backfire massively on Labour 

I completely agree. If you pay tax you should have a say in the government that spends that money. 

I agree about young people being infantilised for far too long too, 16 year olds are treated like children in the education system and then we wonder why they act like children. 
In previous generations they would have had the choice to go out into the adult world, earn money and make their way in life 

Stuart333 said:

Seems like it is not that big a deal.

The issue is that Labour have around 63% of all seats in parliment so can easily push through a bill like this if their members are on board.

On that subject, for the party to have 63% control of power based on only 20% of the potential voters who actually voted for them (or just 14% of the population) is a poor reflection of our democracy.

In a poll this week, as reported by Sky, only 18% said they would definitely vote, 49% said they didn't think they should be able to.

Seems like it is not that big a deal.

I would politely disagree - if younger people are infantalised, I don't think they are able to make good decisions on who to vote for. I first voted when I was 18 - that was back in the 70s when we had to grow up quicker and most went to work at 16 - and to be honest I didn't really have much of a clue about politics or who to vote for.

I understand your idea about being able to vote if you pay taxes, but most young people stay in education until they're at least 18 now, and although they may have a part time job they probably don't earn enough to pay tax, or if so it's very little. Under 18s are not able to open a bank account without a parent or guardian, have a credit card, access trust funds or work in a sales role, so they are not deemed to be able to make sound financial decisions; therefore I don't feel they have the maturity to make a decision about which party will be the best at looking after the country's finances.

I am not prejudiced against younger people, I enjoy chatting with younger members of this forum and many are very intelligent and have good ideas. I just agree with the data that Bunny posted, which is similar to my own life experiences, and I respect that your experience may be different.

I think the most important one is that you can pay tax, but not vote for the government that will collect and spend your taxes.

I think it's an important step in bringing more political awareness to a younger generation, who to my mind, have been infantalised and are kept in a semi childlike status for much to long and I don't think it does them any good.

We've had voting at 16 for Senedd and local elections here for years, I can't see that it makes that much difference honestly. Some people don't vote anyway regardless of thier age, I didn't vote in the last GE, because there was no one who I could bring myself to vote for and I'm sick of voting fo the least bad.

I remember being a few months short of my 18th birthday in 1979, I was really fed up that I wouldn't be able to vote for a government until I was nearly 22.

That was true in my experience.

I’m not in favour of lowering the voting age, mainly because I don’t believe it will benefit our current (supposedly) democratic UK. Generally, 16 and 17 year olds do not have the psychosocial maturity of 18 year olds.

I think Labour is lowering the age for the good of their party, rather than the good of the country.

I agree with Roy that it could backfire.

Roy said:

students have often been seen as being very anti establishment, especially anti conservative.

This is very true.

Remember that the teachers that help form ideas of politics in impressionable minds are predominantly left wing and the whole organisation is state funded.

When I was at school my English class teacher would often punish me (in retrospect because of my autism) by making me take the right wing side of debates and would push the left side with ideas and technique suggestions for debates while I was left to do my own research (this being pre-internet times).

The bedates were a real animal house event with booing of the right wing side and cheers for the left wing.

Talk about indoctrination.

I was always more of a liberal leaning voter but simply being non left leaning in a former mining town in Scotland in the Thatcher era was enough to get you beaten up.

Only my opinion, students have often been seen as being very anti establishment, especially anti conservative. When Labour came up with lowering the age, they were in opposition, there is only one reason why any party would want another group of people to vote, they obviously hope that age group would vote for them.
Now Labour is in power I can see this backfiring, the changes to benefits has altered a lot of peoples opinions. 

I strongly disagree with lowering it - re what Bunny posted.

One of the most senior people who is publicly backing the change seemingly based her opinion, in part, on the fact that 16 and 17 year olds in England can get married.

Except that they can’t. 

Before quietly being corrected, Angela Rayner’s op-ed in The Times initially claimed:

“By law, they can get married and serve our country in the armed forces — but, unlike their peers in Scotland and Wales, 16-year-olds in England and Northern Ireland can’t vote. Why not?”

It’s worrying that the Deputy Prime Minister - who’s also the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party - has based her opinion on such ignorance.

Among neuroscientists, the consensus seems to be that the brain doesn't finish its progression from adolescence to maturity until around or after the mid-20s. Interesting snippets:

From Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT):

"As a number of researchers have put it, "the rental car companies have it right." The brain isn't fully mature at 16, when we are allowed to drive, or at 18, when we are allowed to vote, or at 21, when we are allowed to drink, but closer to 25, when we are allowed to rent a car".

"According to recent findings, the human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s".

MIT - Young adult development project > Brain changes

From University of Rochester Medical Centre:

"Understanding the Teen Brain

It doesn’t matter how smart teens are or how well they scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet. The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.

In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part.

In teens' brains, the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing—and not always at the same rate. That’s why when teens have overwhelming emotional input, they can’t explain later what they were thinking. They weren’t thinking as much as they were feeling."

University of Rochester Medical Center - Understanding the Teen Brain