SHOULD WE LET SIX-YEAR-OLDS VOTE? Cambridge Politics Professor David Runciman recently called for the voting age to be reduced to 6.

SHOULD WE LET SIX-YEAR-OLDS VOTE?

Cambridge Politics Professor David Runciman recently called for the voting age to be reduced to 6. The idea of such pressing political issues as ‘is 7pm too early for bedtime?’ taking centre stage in election debates might be entertaining, but it probably isn’t very practical. However, there’s no doubt that age is fast becoming one of the central dividing lines in Western politics. While in 2016 American young people ‘felt the Bern’, backing Sanders in huge numbers, in the UK many under 30s spent the summer of 2017 chanting 'Ooooh Jeremy Corbyn' to the tune of the White Stripes song 'Seven Nation Army'. It was the sonic embodiment of Britain’s political generation gap. The same millennials heavily backed Labour in that year’s general election. What’s going on? Why has politics apparently become generational warfare? What will the long-term impact of this be? In his scintillating new dissection of the political age conundrum, former PR man to anarchist pop collective Chumbawamba turned radical left thinker Keir Milburn addresses these questions, giving a surprising new twist to this debate. The answer does not lie with tweaks to the electoral system or enfranchising toddlers. It’s much more radical than that.

GENERATION LEFT

by Keir Milburn