There’s no magic age when you become a grown-up

From voting to buying fireworks, Britain’s rules about adulthood make little sense

(Credit: rawpixel.com)

There are two — and perhaps only two — directions in which any debate within elite British discourse can go. The first was made famous by the American lawyer and author, Mike Godwin, who coined the eponymous axiom¹, which states that, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one²."

The second is a little more parochial. It lacks a fancy name or codified definition, but it goes something like this: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone revealing that they attended Oxford or Cambridge — no matter how tangential to the conversation — approaches one.” Don’t name it after me — I’m still holding out for a foreign policy doctrine³.

The debate surrounding the UK government’s decision to lower the voting age to 16 for all national elections therefore represented something of a missed opportunity. Despite my best efforts, I failed to find anyone saying “Gosh! I couldn’t vote until my Cambridge finals!” or “I went to Oxford and I’ve met adults who can’t figure out how to operate a pencil. If they can vote, so can 16-year-olds.” Is this… growth?

Emmanuel College Front Court, Cambridge (Credit: David Iliff)

The reasons for the policy change are pretty straightforward. Labour promised it would do so in its election manifesto. It is — and this is the beauty of many a social and civic reform — virtually cost-free. Not to be sniffed at when the Office for Budget Responsibility is breathing down your neck. It is, to be fair, likely to benefit Labour — though not by much. There is a long, rich and frankly hilarious history of political parties amending the franchise or voting system, only for it to backfire spectacularly on them.

There are currently around 1.6 million 16 and 17-year-olds in Britain, and Labour comes out on top — though a recent poll by Merlin Strategies found that only 18% said they would definitely vote if an election were held today. Moreover, there are only a few constituencies in which the number of new voters exceeds the majority, though amongst them are Wes Streeting’s seat in Ilford North and Jess Phillips’s in Birmingham Yardley.

One Tory source told The Daily Mail that the policy amounted to “bare-faced ballot box stuffing”, an accusation that might be taken more seriously if the previous Conservative government had not unilaterally changed the voting system for mayors and police and crime commissioners in order to give themselves a better chance of winning on a low share of the vote.

Age is but a number

The age at which you can and cannot do certain things in Britain is pretty wild, but I suppose it reflects the fact that there is no one point at which we are all grown up, and a recognition that not all rights and responsibilities are equal. For example:

You can give evidence in court from birth. But you must be five to drink alcohol in private. You can be convicted of a criminal offence and handed a custodial sentence at 10 but cannot sign a new passport until you are 12. Want to work? Got to be 13, but you’ll have to wait a further year before you can enter a pub on your own (and only then if the landlord permits).

At 15 (or, to be precise, 15 years and nine months) you can apply to join the Royal Navy and Air Force, but can’t actually serve until you are 16, when you can also finally purchase aerosol paint. But that excitement swiftly melts away at 17 when you can drive a car, at 18 when you can buy fireworks and at 21 when you can adopt a child. As for smoking, bad luck: the Tobacco and Vapes bill is set to make it illegal for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to purchase cigarettes at any point in their lifetime.

Still, no legislation in the world is powerful enough to prevent people from telling you — apropos of nothing — that they studied at Oxbridge.

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1. Try saying that aloud ten times in a row

2. In a 2023 article for The Washington Post, Godwin clarified: “I continue to insist that Godwin’s Law should never be read as a conversation-ender or as a prohibition on Hitler comparisons. Instead, I still hope it serves to steer conversations into more thoughtful, historically informed places.”

3. The Kessler Doctrine: whereby diplomatic relations are based solely on vibes