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”
Dan Jones
RT @leftfootfwd: Another Lib Dem u-turn – this time they vote down votes at 16: http://bit.ly/bBvefi
Tom
Also, given how much the Lib Dems have attacked Labour and said that they should all support the bill because they backed AV in their manifesto (and that they should just disregard the gerrymandering, reduction in representation, and general pissing-around with democracy the bill brings with it), it seems a bit rich to now accuse Labour of introducing irrelevant additions to the bill.
Not least because this isn’t irrelevant at all. It’s only for this referendum vote, as has been pointed out, so could hardly have been moved separately. It’s a good trial run, to see what turnout is like among 16-year-olds, whether it boosts public involvement, etc., and could form the basis for an argument to extend the franchise more generally. And given that by the time of the next general election these 16-year-olds will be allowed to vote, it seems a sensible place to start a votes-at-16 move, by giving them a say in how that voting will work.
D Mills
Not as wheel-screeching as:
“SpAds should be paid for by political parties not the taxpayer.” (Clegg in Opposition)
“Have you met my two SpAds, whose salaries are paid for by the taxpayer not my political party?” (Clegg in Government)
But still good. There’s a book in this.
Guy Aitchison
Disappointing. There’s plenty of stuff to attack the Lib Dems on without contrived nonsense like this. This was a wrecking amendment designed to derail the AV referendum by tacking on another constitutional issue which deserves its own separate legislation and debate. It starts to look like the boy who cried wolf if you scream “traitors” and “sell outs” whenever the Lib Dems aren’t able to implement their policy.
Mr. Sensible
Totally unsurprised.
This is something I fully support; I think that if you can work and fight for your country you should be able to vote.