Sixteen and 17-Year-Olds Can Vote in Next United Kingdom General Election
Gee….I wonder why!
Gee, I wonder why UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party want youngins to vote in elections.
“I think it’s really important that 16 and 17-year-olds have the vote, because they are old enough to go out to work, they are old enough to pay taxes, so pay in,” said Starmer. “And I think if you pay in, you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on, which way the government should go.”
From Sky News:
They can already vote in Senedd elections in Wales and Holyrood elections in Scotland, but this will mean all 16 and 17 year olds across all four UK nations can vote in local, regional and general elections.
Up to 9.5 million more people will now be able to vote, the IPPR thinktank said. The latest figures show 48,208,507 people are registered to vote.
The last time the voting age was changed was in 1969 when it was reduced from 21 to 18.
The government has said the change will “boost democratic engagement in a changing world, and help to restore trust in UK democracy”.
Granted, the Tories don’t want the youngins to vote because they know how they will vote.
Either way, both parties don’t care about your rights or if it’s the right thing to do.
As usual, they only care about their political future and power.
British PM Keir Starmer announces 16 and 17 year olds will be allowed to vote in the UK.
“I’m really pleased we’re able to bring more young people into our democracy and give them a chance to have a say over how their taxes are going to be paid.”
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 17, 2025
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Comments
Aren’t they also getting rid of the Voter ID requirement?
Labour is betting hard on fraud and shenanigans.
No. It is still a legal requirement to produce ID before being allowed to vote.
Although I am surprised Labour hasnt move to change this requirement.
It appears to have not been removed, just relaxed as to what counts to the point of uselessness.
Yes, still technically some requirements but how did one source report it? Oh yes “radically watered down.” A bank card will suffice. So we have mindless, brainwashed young lemmings with essentially no ballot security. In sum, there actually won’t always be an England. At least what remains will be, well, not really England as we knew it. But that was clear a while ago.
what happens when the 16 yo who are getting bullied by the usual suspects vote conservative!!
thats the only hope
I agree with the cuck PM. If you pay in, you can vote. If you receive welfare benefits, you can’t.
Ok. But if you get 100%+ of it back at the end of the year (including through any credits such as the child tax credit), then you don’t get to vote either.
Frankly, I think the way it used to be handled was better. You had to be a property owner in order to vote.
And the government makes it harder to be a property owner year after year.
“The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire”.
The home front is doing that setting for them. A great nation erases itself.
Yes, but whoever sells abayas, hijabs, and niqabs for Muslim women to wrap themselves in is really raking it in there now, at least based on some videos I’ve seen.
Thus do democracies commit suicide.
Lets do the same but with a few caveats; 16 = adult so:
1. no juvenile justice diversion
2. Can’t be claimed as dependent unless they are functionally disabled, gotta file taxes separately
3. Reform K-12 to get students graduated from HS at 16, end obligation to provide State funded education at 16
4. No child support at age 16
5. Fully emancipated, legal adult, expected to be fully independent unless disabled
6. If Parents/guardians throw them out at age 16 these adults are on their own
7. Reform military service contracts to allow 16 year olds to sign an enlistment contract.. or any other contract
8. Remove all age based barriers to allow 16 year olds to vote, buy/consume alcohol, tobacco, firearms and everything else that may be age restricted currently
Final suggestion would be to require someone to be age 21 OR have completed a four year term of active duty military service to attend a College/Univ. Could still attend a junior college or 2 year vocational/tech program. This would force students to experience more of the real world before entering a University and arm them with life experience before they are faced with attempts to indoctrinate them. Nothing like a first pay check and seeing how much in taxes is taken to jar someone away from support for big govt, socialism or Marxism.
There can never be a reason to allow sixteen year olds to vote! None! Their brain is not fully developed and the whole world knows it. They are the crime wave that threatens most big city streets because they don’t have any ethics or love for this country. Muslims in the UK reproduce at least four times greater than Brits do so guess who will control the votes in a few years? The only time a sixteen year old should be considered an adult is for capital murder.
The current folk wisdom on ‘brain development’ proclaims it doesn’t happen until age 25. Since you didn’t offer an alternative age and you adopted the line of thinking of that argument then presumably you want ‘childhood’ extended until age 25. Hardly seems fair to demand the harshest adult sentence be applied to those you deny most other ‘adult’ liberties and responsibilities.
Why shouldn’t we have one single age to be considered fully an ‘adult’ in all respects? Especially if we realign our K-12 educational system to equip them with a HS education on th same timeline. Why should we have one age to drive as an ‘adult’ 16, another to vote 18, another to consume alcohol 21, another to buy tobacco 19, remain on their Parent’s health IN to 26?
IMO one major impediment to a functional society is this notion of extended adolescence. It is harmful b/c it causes young people to believe they don’t/won’t face consequences. Life is tough and the sooner we equip our young with the tools to succeed, force them out of the nest to meet the hardship of life the better. Telling them they aren’t ‘grown ups’ due to brain development until they are 25 (1/3 of their lifespan) is Cray Cray.
The UK has an easy fix. The same one the USA is beginning to adopt…find them and deport them while sealing off the border. For a relatively small Island Nation with the ‘chunnel’ as a choke point it seems a much simpler task than what faces the USA as a continental size Nation with thousands of miles of land border and thousands of miles of coastline to guard.
You are really getting into the weeds with you definition of “Adult”. The reason we have drinking and driving ages is due to the lack of common sense that sixteens display. You can learn to drive a car but when the young age of sixteen was adopted roads and driving was much much simpler. As to drinking. Allowing sixteens to drink coupled with allowing them to drive would be a disaster. I think you are mixing up “Maturity” and “Adult” and they are not the same. I would vote for eighteen to be the age for driving and 21 for voting and drinking.
roads and driving was much much simpler
Hogwash. The only complications nowadays are added regulation.
I think you are mixing up “Maturity” and “Adult” and they are not the same.
But they should be the same. That’s what “adult” is supposed to be: “mature.”
Everything age restricted should be the same age. Period. Otherwise you’re discriminating.
‘Into the weeds’…not at all. In contrast to your approach of multiple different ages for different adult activities I am calling for a single, simple, bright line threshold age to be considered an adult for all adult activities.
Childhood on one side of this threshold age and adulthood on the other. Simple, clear, unambiguous. No coddling but no denial of liberty to engage/enjoy adult activities either.
They are the crime wave that threatens most big city streets because they don’t have any ethics or love for this country.
That has almost nothing to do with their age. Everything to do with their upbringing – which is provided by those well over 16.
My only problem with this is “would force students to experience more of the real world”. I think that should be done while they are children, since that’s how you actually grow up.
Also, I would set 18 so you don’t need a constitutional amendment. Use the one that is there, and write your laws to say, “Since we don’t think discriminating on age, outside of the definition of an adult, is appropriate; and the Constitution sets the age for ‘adulting’ (voting) at 18; no law can discriminate against an adult on the basis of age.” And let the consequences fall where they may. (Perhaps a caveat that “If you do the crime of an adult, you will face the penalties of an adult.” But you have to define that so people can’t wail and moan about “That poor baby!”)
Meh as a practical matter I’d go along with 18 as the age but if we’re trying to fix multiple societal ills then age 16 is far better. For most of history even in the industrial age 16 was considered to be an adult. Using 16 also gets the K-12 system reformed to push students out earlier.
I truly believe a young person at 16 would be far better off long term earning some life experience and then going to Univ if they wanted to with 5 years of life/job experience under their belt. They would be far less susceptible to indoctrination from woke Professors and would almost certainly choose more worthwhile majors than fluffy X-studies to end up with a pile of student debt and a nearly worthless degree.
It also ends the charade of ‘extended adolescence’ which is another way of avoiding consequences for the so called adults who refuse to hold young people accountable for their actions. In the end all this does is reinforce a sense of entitlement and immunity that eventually ends when these young people cross whatever threshold age into adult prison time.
Well, that’s not a good idea — when Germany lowered the voting age to 16 for the 2024 European Parliament elections, the majority of young voters ended up supporting the far-right AfD party – because they know what’s coming to them…
Sounds like a nonsense comparison to me – while 52% of current voters (and the majority Labour Party) prefer reduced immigration to some degree I’ve never heard of a UK party getting votes on a “no new immigrants” platform. Add to that the younger the voter the more they poll as pro immigration.
My preference (American here – so not really my circus, not really my monkeys) would be to oppose lowering the voting age – just on the basis that going thru puberty is NOT a plus when making important or complicated decisions.
That was not the intended consequence of reducing the voting age though was it 🙂
Events rarely proceed the way the rainbow unicorn conspiracy foresees them. Witness the embarrassing black and Hispanic support for Trump.
and the scheme is repeated:
They can already vote in Senedd elections in Wales and Holyrood elections in Scotland, but this will mean all 16 and 17 year olds across all four UK nations can vote in local, regional and general elections.
thats the way they do it in the states too
oh,, they can ONLY vote in local elections if they arent citizens
CA MD DC allow this and it will grow
and then BAM!!!
like the uk they can vote in general elections
which I suspect in the usa they can and DO now …as a sympathetic poll watcher will look the other way
Ironically, it’s not the way all states do it. Here in Arizona, they can ONLY vote in FEDERAL elections if they can’t prove they’re citizens. Because Arizona doesn’t want non-citizens voting, and the feds do (and sued Arizona to allow it).
yeah
that is just more sicko lefty sh
how do they get away with that!!?
It isn’t so much that Feds want non Citizens to vote in Federal elections (it remains a crime to do so) it is more that Congress can’t be bothered to pass legislation to require ‘real ID’ be presented to be allowed to vote in Federal elections. If Congress would make that one change it would effectively end the issue and force more visible methods by those who want to allow aliens to vote in local/State elections.
Why stop there? Why not 5 year old or anyone with a dog in the fight? The indoctrinated have always been looked at as the saviors of insane liberalism.
Its not a done deal as Labour is yet to introduce the legislation to Parliament. But yeah, what could possibly go wrong with giving children the right to vote?
so then its just another lefty setup for possible failure on the Parliament not approving
but getting the little ones to hate the je Oh I mean the Tories ,,even more than they already do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbwkZnNWUPo
So … are they saying that only people who work and pay taxes can vote?
I guess it’s a Britishism, but the “pay in” part at the end doesn’t seem to make sense. The working and paying taxes is the “pay in” part, I would have thought …
Great idea, though. So, if someone pays his kid for chores and has the kid file taxes then that kid gets a vote! “Clean your room, get a vote.”
“Brilliant!”, as the Brits love to say.
Stupid. They should raise the voting age not lower it. They have no skin in the game, The don’t have a mortgage or a family. They have next to no responsibilities except maybe cleaning their room, doing dishes, and taking out the garbage. Thank you for illustrating once again why democracies suck and politicians are grifting pandering scum.
The US lowered voting age from 21 to 18 (old enough to fight, old enough to vote) long ago. 25 would be a better age as to brain maturity but being taxed is a good reason to vote.
And then proceeded to raise it back, item by item, for nearly every privilege of adulthood EXCEPT for voting.
Once the scam is pointed out to you, you can’t help but smell the national stench.
AS Ca looks to raise the age( to 26yo) of what is considered an Adult when a crime is committed these same people then say
16 yo must be treated like adults and be allowed to vote
how has the gop not seized on these schemes and stomped on lefty once and for all
The most popular name for newborn boys in Britain: “Muhammad.” There you have it. Lowering the voting age will ultimately provide more voting power to Islam. Evidently Starmer wants to surrender to Islam, along with other European governments.
Generally we should raise the voting age, not lower it. The founders of the American republic well understood the dangers of democracy, so they advocated severe restrictions on the franchise: white male property owners only. In other words, people with real skin in the game. They knew that ultimately democracies always fail. Reading the Federalist Papers taught me how brilliant our founders were, and how odious our contemporary rulers. are.
Yep. Universal suffrage is among the most insane and ridiculous ideas on Earth. The Founders would have laughed at the idea (and pretty much did).
To their credit, the Founders only called for direct election of 1/2 of 1/3 of the federal elected offices – the House of Representatives. But the idea that people leeching off of the government could vote would have turned their stomachs. Well … the idea of people living off of the government would have turned their stomachs, so giving them a vote would just raise the disgust level an order of magnitude or two.
the idea of people living off of the government would have turned their stomachs
Though not so much as you would hope. It only took until 1827-35 (I don’t know where in there the story happens) when the real Crockett had that little showdown with Congress over the Constitution not authorizing “benevolence” to be paid from the nation’s coffers. Davey was born 10 years after the DoI.
Reminds me, haven’t watched ‘wild in the streets’ in a while
Babylon Bee reports that Muslims are demanding the voting age be lowered to 13 so their wives can vote.
The Prophet’s wife was 8, was she not?
Their 35yos aren’t mature enough to vote, but let’s include 16 and 17yos!
Yeah. It sure is a shame to watch civilization self-destruct right in front of my eyes.
The real mistake wasn’t lowering the voting age to 18, it was banning literacy tests. Congress should not only re-legalize them but require them, and of course require that they be administered fairly as they should always have been.
I’d settle for a HS diploma/GED as a proxy for ‘literacy’ + property ownership qualification.
Britain’s circling of the drain accelerates.
Brilliant.
Ok, interesting thought here…
What is the ethnic breakdown of those children under 18 by percentage?
Just considering a large immigrant population with lots of kids…