Perfect Burnham: No ID Needed to Vote, but ID Needed to Post Online

Andy Burnham, Labour's not-quite-so-new-anymore prime minister, is not in disastrous political shape, but he leads a party in a nowhere-as-safe-as-it-would-like position. Being better off than when Keir Starmer was PM is not exactly impressive. 

So Burnham is rushing through a proposed law, drafted under Starmer, to radically reshape the electorate by removing voter ID requirements and decreasing the voting age, because everybody knows that while our brains are undeveloped until we are 26 and therefore we can't be held responsible for our actions until then, they are developed enough at 16 to make kids wise enough to vote...Labour. 

Andy Burnham is changing the law You will need an I.D to use social media You will no longer need an I.D to vote in elections We can all see what is happening here right?

— Basil the Great (@BasilTheGreat) October 11, 2026

Emerson argued that a "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," but generally speaking, consistency is not foolish, and almost always Emerson's poetic aphorisms had bad advice buried in them. So I don't feel bad when I point out how inconsistent the Left's positions are when it comes to kids' mental capacities. Frankly, after decades of watching the youth make bad decisions, I'd be inclined to raise the voting age. A man can dream, can't he?

The proposal to weaken voting rules is, of course, sold on the idea that voting should be easy and universal, which sounds good enough until you think about it. A surface appeal to expanding democracy as a principle tugs at our heartstrings but fails the common-sense test. 

The bill, the so-called "Representation of the People Bill," clearly tries to reshape the electorate to Labor's benefit by wiping out safeguards that ensure only eligible voters can vote, and only voters with a basic level of competence are allowed to. 

Andy Burnham’s plan to vandalise this country’s electoral rules is one of the most short-sighted and misguided to emerge yet from Labour’s time in office.

Mr Burnham inherited the woeful Representation of the People Bill from Sir Keir Starmer. But under the new Prime Minister, it has been made even worse. It has emerged that Mr Burnham is trying to rush it into law, fuelling fears he is about to call an early election.

The bill is chock full of the Left’s worst ideas.

Chief among them are proposals to water down the vital safeguards that ensure the integrity of our elections. Perhaps most significant is the plan to reverse the requirement that voters present photo ID at polling stations, introduced by the Conservatives.

Quite why Labour wants to make electoral fraud easier to commit is unclear. At the last election, there was no evidence this measure dampened turnout in any meaningful way. And while a “papers, please” culture is antithetical to this nation, many aspects of British life, from opening a bank account to renting a flat, already require simple proof of identity. It is hardly an affront to suggest that such an important task as choosing the government should also be shielded from fraud.

Then there is the utterly foolish proposal to lower the voting age to 16 for all UK elections.

Those aged 16 can’t drive, buy alcohol or even purchase fireworks. On almost every measure, the trend has been towards infantilising them further. In recent years they have been barred from leaving education, getting married or accessing swathes of the internet. So why does Labour think they are suddenly responsible enough to determine who governs the country?

In a wiser age, people realized that the purpose of voting was not to conduct a poll, but to engage citizens who had studied enough and cared enough about the issues of the day to have a voice in setting government policies. 

Universal democracy was understood to be a foolish form of government for any number of reasons, so safeguards were in place to shape the electorate in a manner that the voting population was more likely to be informed of the basics, invested enough in the long-term viability and prosperity of society, and least likely to view government as a tool to loot the country. 

That's why there were often property qualifications, literacy requirements, and that was the logic of age restrictions. None of these safeguards were perfect, and they were occasionally abused, but then again, so is universal voting without ID, especially mail-in voting, where ballots are left out in public without any verification of who is voting. So spare me the "every eligible voter should have the opportunity to vote BS," because an ineligible voter casting a ballot cancels out a legal vote. 

The argument that kids should vote is based on the same silly argument that made people claim that we should care what Greta Thunberg thought about climate change: that kids would have to live longer under the consequences of the laws than the adults who vote for them. 

Anyone who has dealt with a teenager knows that the only group less likely to understand long-term consequences than teens is toddlers, so trusting them to make long-term decisions is absurd.

Toss aside the stupid "fairness" arguments, which are totally concocted by the same people who create technocracies that rule by fiat, and ask yourself the simple question: will allowing illegal aliens easier access to the ballot and encouraging children to vote lead to better governance?

The answer is obvious, which tells you everything you need to know. Labour wants this law to pass because its bad policies appeal to irresponsible people. 

So they want an electorate that is irresponsible. 

It's no more complicated than that. They make no great moral case here, whatever they say. They just want an electorate that will choose them, or at least they hope it will. The Greens would likely benefit from youth voting, although Labour may be betting it can build a vote-harvesting machine to offset that. 

The Telegraph is right: this is vandalizing the system, not improving it. 

https://t.co/oCV3GMUWhx

— David Strom (@DavidStrom) October 12, 2026

As for making social media harder to access: the goal is simple. Shut people up. Suppress dissent. The evidence is everywhere: they're already doing it.