Ben Pawlowski
SIXTEEN and seventeen-year-olds have been handed the right to vote in the next UK election after Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government committed to the largest extension of the electorate in decades.
Critics including Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage have accused the government of attempting to ‘rig’ future elections by giving up to 1.6 million youngsters the vote.
But deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the move would get ‘democracy back on track’ and give disgruntled teenagers ‘a stake in our country’s future’, accusing right-wing critics of ‘running scared of young people’.
Writing in The Times, Ms Rayner said: “There are many other 16-year-olds across this country who are working hard every day, paying their taxes, caring for relatives and contributing to our society. By law, they can 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?”
Some commentators believe Labour are pushing through on reforms because young people are more likely to support left-wing parties.
READ MORE: Spain’s far-right party openly plans to deport ‘recently arrived’ immigrants
A recent YouGov poll puts Labour on top with the young, with 28% among those aged 18-24, compared to just 22% with the wider electorate.
Labour are followed by the Green Party on 26%, the Liberal Democrats on 20%, the Conservatives on 9% and Reform UK on 8%.
But left-wingers thinking electoral reform is a sure-fire way to give them a much-needed boost in the polls may benefit from heeding a warning from Spain, where youngsters have gone in a very different political direction.
Unlike in the UK, where right-wing Reform UK are more popular with older voters, far-right Vox are strongest with the 18-24 cohort.
According to one poll by 40dB, over 27% of voters aged between 18 and 24 would vote for Vox, who recently vowed to deport eight million people from Spain who ‘have not adapted to Spanish customs’.
In contrast, just 11% of voters aged over 65 said they would vote for Vox.
Labour’s sister party, the Socialist PSOE of prime minister Pedro Sanchez, would receive just 15% of the vote amongst the youngest cohort.
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In fact, Vox would receive a greater proportion of the vote among voters aged 18-24 than all the left-wing parties – PSOE, Sumar and Podemos – combined.
Vox’s fusion of nationalism and populism is particularly attractive to young men, reflecting a European-wide trend of young male voters opting to support far-right parties.
Vox is the leading choice among males under 25 and under 45, with 30% of men aged 18-28 expressing voting intention for the far-right party, compared to 18% of women in the same age bracket.
With Reform UK and Nigel Farage increasingly turning to TikTok and social media to garner support, the same thing may well happen in the UK.
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