Votes at 16 could become the next political football against a backdrop of 'culture wars'
Keir Starmer's recent comments on LBC suggesting that a future Labour government will commit to lowering the voting age to 16 have produced a strong negative response from Conservative MPs.
Voting age reform has become entangled with the rise of age as a critical electoral divide and the emergence of "culture wars" politics. In Scotland, the Conservatives under Ruth Davidson reversed their initial opposition to the SNP's introduction of "Votes-at-16" having had experience of it in Scottish elections.
The 2017 General Election marked an important turning point with age becoming recognised as the critical demographic predictor of party support - with younger people far more likely to support Labour and older people far more likely to support the Conservatives.This has had the paradoxical effect of both raising the importance of "Votes-at-16" as an issue in UK politics while at the same time reducing the prospects of establishing a cross-party consensus for implementing it.
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