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There are no good arguments against votes at 16

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As someone who was denied the chance to vote in a parliamentary election until I was 21, it might not surprise you that I have every sympathy with 16 and 17 year olds who were similarly denied a chance to vote this year. It was a shame, then, that Jim McMahon's bill to reduce the voting age was not brought to a vote on Friday, and dismaying to discover that there are still plenty of opponents of votes at 16 out there, throwing out the usual tired arguments against change. Most of these arguments tend towards abstract musings on the nature of adulthood, aka "why should we trust 16 year olds with a vote if we don't trust them with a pint?". Which itself raises the question of exactly what kind of damage they are expecting 16 year olds to do with their ballot paper. Give themselves a papercut? The intention of restricting things like alcohol, gambling, smoking, tanning salons, etc. to 18 is clearly to protect children from potentially harming themselves or others

Why a new "centrist" party would probably fail

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It's been heartening to see that the  softening of Labour's Brexit position over the summer has not led to a decline in its polling figures, and may even be driving them up a little. Labour's change was apparently motivated at least in part by the fear that a new "centrist" party would emerge that would hurt them more than the Tories . Certainly, there's been much talk recently of such a party, despite or perhaps because of the lacklustre performance of the existing centrist party, the Lib Dems, in the snap election. The belief that a new centrist party would sweep all before it is based on the idea that if Labour moves left while the Tories move right, a great yawning gap of homeless voters will appear in the middle. Assuming voters are normally distributed across the political spectrum, the picture looks something like this: Which is fine as far as it goes, but the label "centrist" bugs me, both as a tag for the potential new party and in i

Life in Remainville: Episode 3, A New Hope

So it turns out the method of counting window posters is scientific, with Jeff Smith crushing all before him: Party Votes % +/- % Jeff Smith Labour 38,424 71.7 +18.0 John Leech Liberal Democrat 8,549 15.9 -8.0 Sarah Heald Conservative 5,530 10.3 +0.6 Laura Bannister Green 865 1.6 -6.5 Sally Carr Women’s Equality 234 0.4 Far from being a marginal, Withington must now be one of the safest seats in the country. The Lib Dems remain in second place but will surely now turn their attention to more winnable targets. The Greens' collapse mirrors their poor performance nationally, while the Tories have benefitted only marginally from the disappearance of UKIP. What a turnaround we've seen since the start of the campaign, and even the local elections, when it seemed like Big Andy would be the only Labour politi

Life in Remainville: Smith vs Leech revisited

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In case you were thinking the main contenders had gone quiet, I can assure you that our hallway carpet continues to be submerged in red and yellow leaflets. We've received a CV from John Leech, a personal letter from Jeff Smith, an even more personal psuedo-handwritten letter from the Manchester Mum of the Year describing how Leech helped her child get medical treatment, two reminders to vote on Thursday, and more besides. But rather than attempt to scan all that lot in I'll just share the two which best summarise their respective campaigns. Here's Smith's effort, complete with endorsement from Big Andy and a number of references to police cuts (a growing theme in the Labour material):  (Top prize for misleading stat there with the 93% line) And here is Leech, no longer featuring photos of Corbyn but abstract references to infighting instead. (I'm still trying to understand the logic of the "more spending, more taxes, no pla

Life in Remainville: attack of the nasty old also-rans

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Pantomime villain Sarah Heald finally appears in leaflet form:   One of the most content-free leaflets I've ever seen, though don't worry because Team May is here to explain all... I guess this leaflet was produced back when standing with Theresa May was considered to be an advantage, maybe not so much now. Everything else about it has a distinctly phoned-in quality, not least that the designer couldn't even be bothered to replace "MY CANDIDATE" with the actual name of the candidate. Even if the Tories do end up with a 100+ majority after all, I will at least take solace that Her Candidate is not going to Westminster.

Life in Remainville: a teachable moment

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That must have been a particularly engaged art class...

Life in Remainville: at the Hustings

To St Clements, scene of the 2015 hustings , for a re-run. With the Big Two back again with much the same views I didn't learn a whole lot that would sway my vote, although Jeff Smith's vow to keep fighting for the interests of pro-Europeans was welcome. He had a neat line on a second referendum, being sympathetic to one but noting the necessity of a change in public opinion first, which he predicted would happen. Smith's vote against Article 50 has indeed innoculated him against a clear line of attack from John Leech, and Brexit was far from the dominant theme of the evening, putting a question mark over the very name of this blog series. Much more focus was on questions of tax and spending, which is exactly where Labour needs the debate to be and very bad news for the Lib Dems . Leech's other main attack was that a vote for Smith is a vote for Corbyn Chaos, but the lack of reaction confirmed my feeling that Withington is not the most receptive area in the country to