Will lowering the voting age backfire on Labour?

Paywalled postscript; distributional democracy

This article was first published in UnHerd. Everything I publish elsewhere is shared here, as a gift to the nation. But if you want the full picture, become a paid subscriber. It’s just a few quid a month; such is the price genius is reduced to.

For some time, the progressive left has treated democracy and progressive democracy as interchangeable terms; both are understood as both means and rationale for the continual expansion of rights and entitlements, overseen by an ever-growing state.

Proposals to expand the franchise have been floating around, therefore, for a while; earlier this year the Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse sponsored the launch of a report calling for the vote to be extended an extra 4.4 million people - including those who arrived illegally - because restricting voting to British citizens was "colonial". Whilst Labour have not gone that far yet, there have been rumours they are considering allowing 5 million foreign nationals to vote, and yesterday announced that 16 & 17 year olds would be granted the right to vote.

For some, this is doubtless a moral question. But, if they were to take inspiration from across the Commons Benches, they might repeat Margaret Thatcher’s quote that ‘what is morally right eventually turns out to be politically expedient.’ Expanding the franchise is likely seen by many on the progressive left as a way to insure against the perfidy of the traditional left wing Red Wall voter, and secure new voting blocs to stem the rising rightward tide of British politics.

But if there is one thing to learn from the history of massive changes in political structures, it is that the people who kick open the door are rarely those who come rushing through. The last time a Labour Government lowered the voting age – from 21 to 18, in 1969 - it found itself swept away at the next general election the following year.

So far there have been two narratives on this. The first is that this is a cannot-fail attempt at franchise rigging; but as has been the case with most of Labour’s decisions in it’s first year, it is not as intelligent as it first appears. Research from Merlin Strategy reveals that just 18% say they’d definitely vote. Hardly a repetition of the oft-predicted ‘youthquake’ of the Corbyn days. The second is that, given the rightward turn of Britain’s young, it will hugely backfire and benefit Nigel Farage. Yet only 20% would vote Reform, compared to the 33% saying they’d vote Labour.

Rather than benefitting Farage or Labour, the true winners from this will be the increasingly popular neocommunal challengers threatening Labour’s once-safe heartlands. In several seats, such as Birmingham Perry Barr, Blackburn, and Leicester South, 16- and 17-year-olds already outnumber the current majority, and are already held by “Gaza Independents.” But others, like Jess Phillips’ Birmingham Yardley or Wes Streeting’s Ilford North, could also be vulnerable.

The most likely outcome is that which has characterised most of Labour’s decisions so far; maximum cost for minimal gain. In pushing a policy that looks, smells, and walks like franchise rigging they will drain political capital, lose yet more of the electorate’s trust, and feed the growing perception that their agenda is driven more by cynical arithmetic than national interest.

Worse still, they may gain nothing from it. After committing to the Conservative’s smoking ban they risk the continuation of the two tier narrative, and by handing the vote to a demographic with uncertain turnout and loyalties – Merlin Strategy’s poll did not include a Corbyn Party option - this move could guarantee nothing more than delivering a few more seats into the hands of the radical, localist, neocommunal campaigns already snapping at their heels in key urban seats. The left, as it has always done, may continue to feast on itself.

Paywalled postscript; distributional democracy

Let's call this what it is: franchise rigging.

Labour is simply doing this as a way to insure itself against the perfidy of the red wall, which can no longer be relied upon to deliver massive blocs of red MPs time after time. This has been a long time coming; these seats, as Steve Rayson details in ‘The Fall of the Red Wall’, first started drifting away from Labour under the Great Dictator Tonio Blair. That they voted first for Brexit and then Tory three years later was a seismic moment, but seismic activity is caused by centuries-long movements of gigantic forces that are almost imperceptible.