Why a visit to a school persuaded me that young people aged 16 to 18 should have the vote

Let me guess most readers’ reaction to news that Alex Salmond has arm-twisted Westminster into allowing 16- to 18-year-olds in Scotland to vote in the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence. I bet the reaction resembled mine. Annoyance. The very thought! As to the assurance that this concession will be temporary, and pressure will not build to make the change permanent, I’d reply (with many of you): ‘Nonsense!’ So, being on my way to speak at a well-regarded state secondary school in Wells, the Blue School, and hearing the news about Scotland, I decided to test the water. I was there to speak to 16- to 18-year-olds: some 200 of them. I could explore not just their opinions, but their reasoning.

I arrived in Wells not without prejudices of my own: first (as I say) a visceral bias against lowering the voting age. Second, an assumption that the boys and girls would be substantially in favour of the move. Third, a suspicion that such young and naive citizens might struggle to express many cogent arguments at all, one way or the other.

I was wrong on all three counts. They were against the idea. And they debated this among themselves with such cogency that I concluded that these young men and women ought to have the vote, whether or not they wanted it. Let me give you a short summary of our debate.

I began by explaining the Scottish proposal, then asking for a show of hands: who was in favour of 16- to 18-year-olds getting the vote? And who was against? The voting was substantially against: about 70/30, I reckon. At the end of our discussion (during which I never expressed an opinion of my own) I conducted a second vote, on a slightly different question: who among them — assuming they did get the vote before 18 — would actually want to use it?