Nigel Farage could be the real winner if Labour lets teens vote

LONDON — The UK Labour Party is already plotting its next election win — but don’t expect grateful teenagers to come flocking to the cause.
The governing party has committed to giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote, arguing the move would “increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy.” Conservative critics have tried to paint the plan as a self-interested wheeze to “entrench” Labour in office.
Winston Churchill is said to have mused that: “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”
Yet a sizable chunk of today’s British teens seem to like what right-wing challenger Nigel Farage is selling, challenging the cliché that the young can be relied on to vote left, and posing big questions for Labour’s fledgling plan.
The numbers are stark. J.L. Partners polled 16 to 17-year olds during Britain’s recent election campaign, and found Farage’s Reform UK in second place among the cohort, polling at 23 percent.
The left-wing Greens — also a threat to Labour in key seats — were close behind on 18 percent.
The gender breakdown was even more striking. Reform tied with Labour at 35 percent among 16-17 year-old men. The Tories — Labour’s traditional rivals — barely registered.
“Both genders of that age group [were] turning away from mainstream party politics towards what you might call more populist politics,” said J.L. Partners director Scarlett Maguire.
For his part, Farage has worked hard to court the youth vote, and argues that there is a groundswell of support among Gen Z voters for his policies.
The Reform UK leader’s appearance on ITV show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here” last year, and his more than 900,000 followers on TikTok won’t have harmed his standing among younger voters. Farage has also voiced support for controversial online influencer Andrew Tate, calling him an “important voice” for men.
“There will not be swathes of newly enfranchised 16 and 17-year-olds so grateful for the vote that they troop off to congratulate the Labour Party,” predicted Philip Cowley, a politics professor at Queen Mary, University of London who is skeptical of the plans.  “If it turns out Labour are in power for a long time, that will have almost nothing to do with enfranchising 16 year olds.”
The trend for younger voters to shun the left can be seen elsewhere in Europe, where young people are backing right-wing challenger parties in the face of conventional wisdom.
Voters are “looking towards other answers that aren’t in the main parties” due to an “incredibly pervasive” mistrust in politics, said Maguire of J.L. Partners.
“They’re also turning away from mainstream news sources and anywhere where you might then have more buy-in to the political system is ceasing to apply,” she added.
For now, Labour seems in no hurry to deliver on its votes for 16s pledge, which was included in the party’s manifesto going into the general election.
The king’s speech last month laying out the new government’s legislative agenda boasted 40 bills, but proposals to lower the voting age were nowhere among them.
Commons Leader Lucy Powell told the BBC the bill would arrive later in the parliament. Pressed on whether 16 and 17-year-olds would be able to vote by the next general election, Powell said: “I hope so. That’s the intention.”
That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the overhaul, and the lack of a tangible plan has left some campaigners for change frustrated.
“We were disappointed,” said Liz Emerson, CEO of the Intergenerational Foundation which campaigns for a fairer deal for younger people and future generations. “They had made great play of supporting votes at 16.”
Emerson argued that British governments have for too long pandered to the “gray vote,” and says an aging population has created a democratic deficit. “Should the general public be surveyed on whether the over 85s should still have a vote? Do they have the appropriate cognition to be able to have the responsibility of having a vote? I think that’s very dangerous ground.”
Lowering the voting age is unlikely to be a huge logistical challenge for the government, meaning pressing ahead with the plan is more a question of political will. Emerson said she believed the change would ultimately happen, even if the British government had a lot on its plate. “We’re cautiously optimistic, but our country is a mess,” she said. “It might come on through towards the end of the first term of government.”
Polling suggests the public has mixed views on extending the franchise. In June, Conservative pollster Michael Ashcroft found 52 percent of voters were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to lowering the voting age, compared to 38 percent in favor.
And some democracy-watchers argue that boosting the franchise may be ineffective without better civic education.
“I don’t think getting them registered earlier within a school setting alone will be enough,” said Ruth Fox, director of the Hansard Society, which promotes democratic participation. She called for a school syllabus on how politics, elections and parliament actually work, but warned: “There isn’t the kind of resourcing even that we had 20 years ago, 25 years ago, in schools for citizenship education.” 
Cowley said Labour has so far failed to make a positive case for a big constitutional change. “It’s inconsistent with the changes to the way we approach adulthood, which, for the most part, have been raising qualification ages from 16 to 18,” he added.
The trend of delaying choice for children bears out. The age requirement for teenagers to be in some form of education, training or apprenticeship has steadily increased to 18 in England. Last year, the legal age of marriage rose from 16 (with parental permission) to 18 to protect vulnerable children from forced marriages.
As it mulls the plans, Labour can perhaps take some comfort from July’s general election results.
Ipsos data showed Reform won just 8 percent among currently eligible voters in the slightly older, 18 to 24-year-old group, behind both the center-left Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
Reform did, however, come in second place in terms of vote share among 25 to 34-year-olds — suggesting there may be some mileage in Farage’s love-bombing of Britain’s young.
“Something remarkable is happening out there,” the Reform UK leader said during the campaign. “There’s an awakening in a younger generation who have had enough of being dictated to.”