British teenagers gain electoral rights. Is it worth reasoning about in Poland?

As promised by the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, in the following elections to the British home of Commons, to be held in 2029, for the first time, 16- and 17-year-olds will be allowed to vote. People aged 16-17 may already vote in the elections to the parliaments of Scotland and Wales and in local elections in those 2 parts of the United Kingdom. Now the right to vote is to gain an additional 1.5 million voters.

The promise to lower the voting age was in Labour organization programme For this election. This movement was justified by the argument that if young people start voting as early as possible erstwhile they are inactive at school, it would increase the chance that the vote would become a habit for life. In another words, lowering the age of active electoral law is intended to service civic education and to increase participation in elections in the long term.

Starmer himself, announcing the decision now, made another argument: 16-year-olds can legally work, pay taxes and should have an influence – by their democratically elected representatives – on how money is spent on them.

The decision was besides met with criticism. Opponents argue that 16-year-olds cannot marry, enlist in the army and participate in war or buy alcohol. Since we admit that young people cannot consciously decide whether to buy themselves a bottle of wine and drink it at night, possibly there are good reasons to believe that they request time before we grant them the right to vote?

Voting Jump

Conservatives besides argue that Starmer is trying to save his party's support due to the fact that young people vote for left and liberal parties alternatively than the right. In fact, according to estimates Ipsos voted for the Labour organization in 2024, 19% for the Greens, 16% for the Liberal Democrats, 8% for the Nigel Farage Reform, and only 5% for the Conservatives. The biggest differences with national results are so in the Greens' results – among the youngest they won almost 3 times more votes – and the Conservative Party, which in group 18–24 has almost 5 times lower support.

Farage’s organization is besides little successful, although it is fresh poll The ITV News conducted on a trial of 500 sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds gives improvement second place behind the Labour organization and 20% support. According to the estimates of the conservative paper The regular Telegraph, lowering the voting age would let the Labour organization to gain at least 9 mandates that would otherwise go to Reform.

It is besides worth remembering that in the UK there is simply a majority system, with single-mandate electoral districts, which makes the composition of the home of Commons frequently highly disproportionate in view of what the party's support at national level looks like. It will so be important, for example, in which districts the voices of the fresh electorate will focus at the age of 16–17.

How computes The BBC, at 650 constituency to the home of Commons, the number of those where the number of voters aged 16-17 is greater than the majority with which the current deputy or deputy was elected is 120. Which means that in a immense number of districts, even if all voters under the age of 18 voted for the same candidate, the consequence might not change.

At the same time, the fact is that the right will have a bigger problem with getting the youngest electorate than the left. However, this does not mean that the Labour organization will benefit from this. It is possible that the decision to reduce voting rights will hit Starmer's party, costing it to districts where Greens took second place behind the Labour organization – in 2024 was theirs. 39. A fresh organization to the left of Labour is besides building Jeremy Corbyn and she will besides compete for votes with the Labour Party, including among the youngest voters.

The ITV survey besides shows that little than half of the adolescents surveyed (46%) are affirmative about democracy, and more than 1 5th (22%) declare a affirmative attitude towards authoritarian military rule, to a strategy where no elections are held. The election behaviour of this group can so be highly unpredictable.

The only way to balance the grey block?

However, there are besides good arguments to give young people the right to vote. And it's not necessarily the ones that the British government is presenting, due to the fact that income taxes are besides paid by migrants working in the UK, and voting does not depend on economical activity.

The argument with education to participate in elections in turn may simply not work. In 2021, in the first election to the Welsh Parliament, in which 16- and 17-year-olds could vote, only half of them were registered to vote. An experimentation with the simplification of active electoral law was considered a ‘falstart’, although it may have been crucial that elections were held at a time erstwhile the average lives of young people were overturned by pandemic and lockdown. In this poll for ITV News, only 18 percent of respondents replied that they would surely vote in the next election.

The key is something else – an argument for which in its own video points out Michael Walker of the left-wing YouTube channel Novara Media: expanding the number of young voters entitled to vote is someway a way to balance the strength of the "grey bloc" – voters of retirement age – which in an ageing British society is increasingly deciding on the country's politics and future.

If the policy is to take into account in its calculations the future and interest of the generations that will be present in 20, 30 and 40 years, then it cannot be held hostage by seniors who, for apparent reasons, have different priorities. There are different ideas about what to do with this – the right wants to give, for example, greater voice to parents to make prodemographic incentives. However, lowering the voting age is something worth considering. Even if the 16-17 electorate itself is not peculiarly numerous, it may be worth strengthening the more future-oriented block.

This is simply a peculiar problem in Britain. On the right and left, there are voices that are angry at how unfair the intergenerational social agreement in the British Isles is. On the 1 hand, we have pensioners whose pensions are effectively protected from inflation by a very generous valorisation mechanics and who, in addition, are frequently nominal millionaires thanks to the privatization of housing stock in the time of Thatcher, followed by an increase in real property prices, especially in the London agglomeration. On the another hand, young people pushed out of the housing marketplace and deprived of protection from rising life costs, struggling with a deficiency of prospects for the economy in the productivity growth crisis.

It is besides worth considering here

Poland has akin problems. Not only is the housing marketplace peculiarly unfriendly to young people, but the rulers besides regularly adopt solutions – from the simplification of the retirement age to the widow's pension – which aim mainly at providing them with a "grey voice" and do not necessarily work as a good social policy.

The specified simplification of the age of active electoral law does not solve this problem yet, but offers opportunities to strengthen the block more curious in the future perspective. Teenagers can power organization youth, they are curious in politics, they talk in the debate, they are frequently better informed citizens than seniors, and there is no good reason to defend them from the anticipation of taking part in elections in their own, or general, social interest.

Of course, granting a voice to 16- and 17-year-olds would strengthen the most ideologically expressive politicians who sit on the wings – right and left – of the Polish political scene. She would benefit most from that. Confederation and to a lesser degree Together. The problem with the vulnerability of the youngest voters to populism, disinformation and easy, extremist solutions is real, which shows the popularity that Janusz Korwin-Mikke has always enjoyed in this group. On the another hand, it was not the young who got active in the Smolensk sect or the communicative of the elections rigged by the Kamrats.

However, the right to vote cannot be dependent on whether the electorate rightly votes. Following the British example, we should talk seriously about whether or not it is time for a akin move.