Last night Liberal Democrat MPs voted against lowering the voting age to 16 - despite promising to give 16-year-olds the vote in their election manifesto.
Last night Liberal Democrat MPs voted down a Parliamentary amendment to lower the voting age to 16 ahead of for the referendum on the voting system, despite promising to give 16-year-olds the vote in their election manifesto.
The amendment, brought by Labour MP and “former-16-year-old” Natascha Engel, to the Parliamentary and Constituencies Bill, was rejected by 346 MPs – with no Lib Dem MP voting in favour of it, despite the issue not being mentioned in the Coalition Agreement with the Conservatives.
The voting age looks to be another broken Lib Dem pledge – one of the youngest MPs in Parliament, Sarah Teather, boasts about the importance of giving the vote to 16-year-olds on her own website.
She says:
“It would help to demonstrate to young people that their opinions are valued… It still seems ludicrous to me that a person can work, get married and join the army in this country before they are allowed to vote.”
Ceredigion MP Mark Williams told the Commons that the Lib Dems shared the “Lady’s passion” for reducing the voting age – but voted against it nevertheless. Additionally, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who in January expressed his strong support for 16-year-olds voting, notably voted against the amendment last night.
In January the Liberal Democrat leader had said:
“If you can ask someone to die for this country, they should have the right to vote for the Government of the country. So I can guarantee that we will continue to campaign for votes at 16.”
This latest u-turn follows on from the furore over tuition fees last week, with the Lib Dems reigning on their direct pledge to the NUS that they would fight any increase in tuition fees.
52 Responses to “Another Lib Dem u-turn – this time they vote down votes at 16”
Martin Johnston
RT @leftfootfwd: Another Lib Dem u-turn – this time they vote down votes at 16: http://bit.ly/bBvefi
Nat G
RT @enhughesiasm: Lib Dems, you're breaking my heart again https://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/10/another-lib-dem-u-turn-this-time-they-vote-down-votes-at-16/
Duncan Stott
Engel’s amendment would only have given 16 to 17 year olds a vote in the AV referendum. It was a cheap gimmick by Labour purely so they could spin against the Lib Dems in the way this article does.
Lowering the voting age before May would have created chaos for the electoral commission. We need to take reform seriously, not use it to throw cheap shots.
Andy Morwood
Wasn’t this introduced to try and derail the AV bill though? If it’d had passed then the main bill would never have passed.
a41dog
Proof in deed that the lib dems cannot ‘guarantee’ anything!!! Once given the opportunity to prove themselves (and this was an important manifesto ‘guaranteed’ by Nick Clegg himself) the libdems do nothing to disprove the independent and widely known evidence that ‘politicians cannot be trusted at all’ and therefore, proves by their own actions that ‘Parliament [still] aint working for us’ but for other parties that are not we the people!!!
This vote does however prove to me conclusively that whatever political party is pre-eminent in british (and global) government, there is no evidence that proves beyond reasonable doubt that any of them work for us == the people who elect them into power!!!
If a relatively simple act like reducing the age of voting is denied to those affected, then what chance do we have of getting our alleged elected representatives actually to something good like MAKE POVERTY HISTORY or stop the war or do anythig to help the people at all??
More proof, however, that Parliament aint working for us and therefore becomes a House of Traitors and therefore that House becomes null and void and does not, therefore, in all good conscience, represent us at all!!! So why are we paying our taxes to this House of Traitors if a relatively simple manifesto pledge like lowering the age of voting is denied us, the people??
Five months in to this unlawful and traitorous Parliament and the liues and mistrust is simply reinforced and leads me to think “what’s next??”