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Your support makes all the difference.A responsible attitude to tanning doesn’t immediately seem like the most crucial condition for EU membership, but then you realise the Government has got it exactly right. The Italians, the Spanish, the Greeks, Robert Kilroy-Silk: it is the swarthy men of Europe that are by some measure the sickest.
Cabinet Office Minister John Penrose was absolutely right, then, as he made the Government’s case for why 16- and 17-year-olds should not be allowed to vote in the EU referendum, to cite their untrustworthiness at the tanning salon as proof of their unsuitability for democracy.
They may well be able to pay tax, join the Army, watch BBC Question Time and Snapchat intimate selfies all at the same time, but: “Since the last Labour government raised the age of using a sunbed to 18, it surely cannot be right that someone who cannot be trusted to decide on the risks of getting a tan, but can be trusted to choose who governs the country.”
So that’s that then. Sorry kids. Because the grown-ups decided you can’t have a sunbed, you can’t have a vote either. It’s a pity, but there are such obvious ways around the impasse. Give teenagers their own referendum. Which do you want: votes or sunbeds? If they opt for their own enfranchisement then they ought to be taken seriously. Sunbeds win and they’ve proved the doubters right. Plus they’ll be easy to spot at the polling booths.
As with everything at Westminster these days, the debate could not pass without a lengthy intervention from the SNP. Scottish teenagers can vote in independence referendums, but not this. “How do I explain that to my constituents,” asked Owen Thompson, Patrick Grady, Peter Grant, Stephen Gethins, Billy Connolly, John Logie Baird and Begbie from Trainspotting.
Given those teenagers, almost a year ago, weighed up the evidence in front of them and made a balanced decision to remain part of the United Kingdom, you’d think they wouldn’t need it explaining to them.
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