[Latty]

They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Your framing of all three of these is obviously intended to mislead.

[cbeach]

> 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

That's a separate argument.

My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...

> They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats.

When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny.

> They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

[Latty]

> That's a separate argument.

No, you can do things that benefit you electorally, but are also just the right thing to do. Changing the voting system from FPTP would obviously benefit parties other than the major ones, but that doesn't mean it'd be wrong for those parties to do it if they got into power. So the question is if it's good policy, and so I argue it is, if someone can be living by themselves, working in the army or as a full-time apprentice, married, and having a child, they should be able to vote.

> When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny.

Yes, it's absolutely bad that the government isn't making sure these things are legal before doing them, just as with the Palestine Action proscription. It's also hardly a sign of it being gerrymandering, why would they bother when it's going to give them basically zero advantage, given it would only achieve getting a council that will have no time to actually do anything? The obvious conclusion is they thought it was a waste of money and effort to hold them, but if you have to fight a legal battle over it, it won't actually save any money or effort as that has a large cost, even if it is legal.

> Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

BBC reporting as of two days ago: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o

> The BBC understands ministers have offered the Conservatives the chance to retain 15 hereditary members of the House of Lords as life peers.

So it's not specific names as it hasn't been finalised, but 15 of them. I accept I misremembered when I said "all", but the point stands: not gerrymandering.

[cbeach]

> No, you can do things that benefit you electorally, but are also just the right thing to do. Changing the voting system from FPTP would obviously benefit parties other than the major ones, but that doesn't mean it'd be wrong for those parties to do it if they got into power

You're reinforcing my point.

Minor parties (who might collectively be popular with the electorate) will never be able to change the voting methodology to their advantage because FPTP keeps the incumbents in place, and only the incumbents have the power to choose the voting system. So democracy suffers and the incumbents benefit.

Similarly, in this case, allowing children to vote helps the incumbents stay in place despite their party, and their leader being deeply unpopular with the electorate overall. So democracy suffers and the incumbents benefit.

[Latty]

This "logic" doesn't track at all. Enfranchising women may have benefited the party, does that mean we shouldn't have given women the vote and doing so hurt democracy? Of course not.

Just because something benefits a singular party doesn't make it antidemocratic. Expanding the franchise is more democratic, not less. A party being rewarded electorally for doing something good is the system working, not failing.

There are reasonable arguments to be made (in my opinion) that 16 is too young but you aren't making that argument, the one you are making is completely invalid.