COLUMN: Are teenagers the new Suffragettes?

The rationale behind entrusting the vote to older women yet excluding their more youthful sisters is oddly reminiscent of a growing debate in the UK. Except our modern version of suffragettes is not based on gender but age.

In the last general election the Labour Party manifesto included a pledge to lower the voting age to 16.

Justifications for such a reform are based on the fact 16-year-olds can leave home, join the army, have a job, get married and have children. Why then should they be denied a right to decide major issues that will affect their future?

In addition, apathy and disillusionment with politics and politicians are so rife in Britain that encouraging young people to take part in the political process has to be good for the health of our democracy. It might even lead to more young people standing for political office themselves.

Now, it seems, other political parties may be falling in line behind Labour on this issue. Last week George Osborne joined a growing number of Conservatives backing votes for 16-year-olds, with senior Tories predicting that the party could change its stance on younger voters before the next election.

Indeed, senior Conservative backbencher Sir Peter Bottomley said it was a “question of when rather than if” the party would eventually back the policy.

Naturally, changing the voting age would be controversial. It is easy to point out that some 16-year-olds can be very silly. In fact, it would be a strange world indeed if teenagers were uniformly sensible and wise. Being young is all about experimentation and making mistakes in order to evolve into a responsible adult.

Naysayers to electoral reform argue that young people are too easily influenced and too impressionable to be entrusted with the fate of the country.

All that would be very well if older citizens were universally gifted with common sense, a mature attitude to politics or even a willingness to look at all sides of complex issues.

Besides, it has become increasingly clear that all too often politicians tailor their policies for older voters and neglect the interests of young people generally. Look at our current housing crisis for proof.

According to new research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies the chances of a young adult on a middle income owning a home in the UK have more than halved in the past two decades. Young people are not known as Generation Rent by accident, and the monthly costs of private renting mean a growing part of their already low wages go straight into wealthy landlords’ pockets.

I strongly suspect more young people engaged in the democratic process would lead to more resources for affordable and social housing. And other policy areas might well follow suit, from the tolerance of zero hour contracts in our gig economy to the scandal of an ever-increasing pension age that means younger people are supposed to work until they drop.

As for Brexit, if young people had voted in greater numbers in the referendum we know from the statistics Remain would have won. In effect, a generation of people who will not have to live with the consequences of that decision have bequeathed it to Generation Rent. Whatever you think about Brexit, it cannot be a healthy situation for any democracy.

Personally, I would welcome an extension of the franchise to 16-year-olds under certain conditions. Firstly, that schools and colleges have a legal obligation to deliver proper hustings where political candidates face our newest voters’ questions before any election, local or national.

Secondly, that we have a compulsory GCSE of Citizenship and Philosophy added to the school curriculum, which ensures young people are properly taught the basis of our political institutions. After all, you have to know what you are voting for - and why.

Electoral reform is necessarily scary. But the young are our collective future: the time has come to entrust them with a chance to help shape it.