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”
NLas
Wouldn’t the bill have passed – Labour+Lib Dem+Greem + PC + Scots Nats + Carswell Tories would have been enough surely to pass the bill? Why is pulling the bill in a liberal direction ‘derailing’? – if you believe in votes@16 – and Engels does – then the amendment makes sense
Cliff James
Unbelievable LibDem betrayal… RT @leftfootfwd: Another Lib Dem u-turn – this time they vote down votes at 16 http://bit.ly/aWw1U6
Joe Jordan
It saddens me especially as a Social Liberal that the Labour party are attacking us so vociferously.
If blogs were subject to the Press Complaints Commission I would submit a complaint about this post on grounds of accuracy.
“Last night Liberal Democrat MPs voted down a Parliamentary amendment to lower the voting age to 16 ahead of the referendum on the voting system” — FALSE!
they voted against an amendment that would have lowered the voting age for this referendum only, not in general.
I believe this article is a #leftfootfwdfail
Fraser Nesbitt
This blog is factually inaccurate, yet another poor attempt by the Labour Party to try and spin against the Lib Dems. Alex Folkes, one of the founders of the original Votes at 16 campaign, blogged this morning (http://bit.ly/9XKg2Z) condemning Labour for using this issue as a wrecking amendment to the AV bill. Labour should know by now that these sort of tactics will only ever backtrack spectacularly, so maybe it’s time to grow up and get used to being in opposition.
Guy Manchester
LD's: more uturns than black adders twisty turny thing after it'd stopped twisting so as to concentrate on uturning. http://qtwt.us/7k2r