The SNP wants 16 year olds to vote in EU referendum, says party’s Westminster leader Angus Robertson
Young people aged 16 and 17 years old should be given the chance to vote in a EU referendum, according to the SNP.
Angus Robertson, the party’s leader in Westminster, wrote in the Guardian that the SNP would fight for an amendment to the EU referendum bill allowing youngsters the same chance to vote as they had in the Scottish independence referendum. Robertson wrote:
Best practice from the independence referendum must be followed – and that includes extending the vote in an EU referendum to 16- and 17-year-olds across the UK. Scotland’s 56 SNP MPs will certainly seek to amend the legislation to ensure that young people are able to take part in the vote.
The SNP will also argue that, given the Conservatives have only one seat north of the border, any mandate to remove Scotland from the EU without its voters’ consent would be dubious.
Read more: Labour has U-turned on the EU membership referendum
The idea that all parts of the UK should have to vote for independence before the union could be pulled from the EU was dismissed out of hand by Cameron last year, but the SNP aims to push the change through regardless.
We will propose a ‘double majority’ rule – meaning that unless England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each vote to leave the EU, as well as the UK as a whole, Britain would remain a member state.