The advocates for votes at 16 really need to up their game

If I were making the case for votes at 16, I would say that taking part in democracy is so important that people should be encouraged to do it early.

- JOHN RENTOUL

I would say that voting is different from other things that people do, and that taking part can help to prepare young people for the responsibilities of citizenship. Instead, we tend to get a lot of false arguments about the other things that 16-year-olds can do and a rhetorical question: why shouldn’t they be allowed to vote too?

Thus on Thursday, when Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, published the government’s plan to reduce the voting age, she said that “16and 17-year-olds can work, pay tax and serve in the military”.

Each of those actually undermines her case. They can work, but 14-year-olds can work part-time and it is government policy that 16and 17-year-olds should be in education or training. You can pay income tax at any age. And though you can join the armed forces, you may not serve in a combat role.

In an article in The Times, Rayner went further and said that you can be married at 16. Like most people, she was unaware that the law in England and Wales was changed two years ago, raising the age to 18. The article was quietly corrected.

That mistake is the problem in a nutshell. At a time when age thresholds are generally being raised, advocates of votes at 16 have to explain why voting is different from most other things, not why it is the same.

In recent years, the age at which young people can get a tattoo or buy superglue, fireworks or cigarettes has been raised to 18.