Don't be fooled, enfranchising 16-year-olds is nothing but plain old-fashioned vote rigging, writes Esther McVey

Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner can wax lyrical all they like about the virtues of giving children the right to vote, but we all know the game they're playing.

Expanding the franchise to 16-year-olds is bare-faced ballot box fixing and no one should be under any illusions otherwise.

It is a backwards policy crudely designed for one purpose: to keep Labour in power for a generation.

In the UK, we have collectively agreed that 18 is the age when you become an adult.

Reaching adulthood confers a range of rights, such as voting. There are many things which, for good reason, we only let people do after they turn 18.

Expanding the franchise to 16-year-olds is bare-faced ballot box fixing and no one should be under any illusions otherwise, writes Esther McVey

McVey believes the idea put forward by Starmer is 'a backwards policy crudely designed for one purpose: to keep Labour in power for a generation'

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Does Sir Keir Starmer plan to change the law so that whatever people are currently allowed to do at 18 they will soon be allowed to do at 16?

Will our children now be allowed to stand as MPs? Will our juries be packed with children?

Would children be sent packing into combat?

Of course not. Because we all know that makes no sense. We know in our heart of hearts that 16-year-olds are children.

So why would Starmer do it? What is the difference between these rights and voting rights?

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Nothing, other than that ­providing them all would confer no electoral advantage to the Labour Party.

At best, the policy is ­inconsistent. At worst, votes for 16-year-olds is rigging our ­electoral system.

Starmer has been billed as the 'knight who is afraid to fight'. And that is exactly what this is.

Sir Keir Starmer is too scared to fight elections fair and square so he must resort to these ­underhand tactics to rig elections in his favour.

It isn't right and we should not give him our consent to do it.

With this damaging and immoral plan, Starmer is trying to guarantee that Labour stay in power for a generation, with a mandate handed to ram through even more Left-wing policies.

We know that Starmer is a committed Remainer, was desperate for a second referendum and has always believed in free movement of people and is yearning to rejoin the EU.

The EU have already said any deal would come with the price of accepting a ­migration deal.

If not a return to free movement, it would be at least hundreds of thousands of extra migrants a year coming to Britain.

Their wannabe Education ­Secretary (Bridget Phillipson, pictured) will rip up measures we put in place to protect school-­children from learning trans dogma, writes McVey

The one thing about Labour ­governments we all know is that once they run out of money they will come after even more of yours.

They will raise taxes and, worryingly, haven't been able to rule out 17 separate tax rises.

They will come for your pensions, your car, your house, your inheritance. Anyone who has any assets at all will be in the firing line.

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We have seen the embrace of hard-Left trans ideology at the heart of the Labour Party.

Their wannabe Education ­Secretary will rip up measures we put in place to protect school-­children from learning trans dogma. Some of their team have struggled to even tell you what a woman is.

That is the price Britain would pay for votes at 16. Our country locked into higher migration, higher taxes and woke nonsense brainwashing our ­children for a generation.

And that's just the beginning.

Who knows what else London's radical metropolitan Lefties will concoct if they're given unchecked power? The bigger the size of their majority, the quicker and easier it will be for the hard Left to be able to cement itself to the steps of No 10 Downing Street.

We cannot let it happen. It would be a seismic shift to our way of life. Don't help Starmer sneak into Downing Street for the next ten years.

You will have the ultimate buyer's remorse.