Good news! Reversing the mayoral and PC changes were just in the news last week! https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/10/ministers-propose-voting-changes-for-mayoral-elections-in-devolution-bill

Seeing as they are following in the footsteps of the Welsh voting reforms with this news, I would hope that if all goes well then they will follow with the PR changes too. Although looking polling at how Labour are expected to fare in the Sennedd, maybe they will consider it not in their interests.

I believe they have already done that for the mayors.

If we're talking electoral and political reforms I have suggestion(s), please feel free to discuss in the thread below.

1. Change from electing a single MP to a team of two. One remains in the constituency holding regular surgerys for constituents to attend that are open from 2pm to 8pm so working people can still book appointments. The other goes to Westminster. Have them rotate so each person spends half their time in Westminster and half in the constituency.

2. A federated civic social network. Twitter naturally gravitating to being the "online townhall" was a disaster even before musk bought it. What is needed is each region to have a civic social network that are federated at the country level because expecting a private company to regulate what is allowed in public speech in an online public space will lead to conflicts of interest. This would allow communities to organise events, have a digital notice board, give news updates from local authorities, and have digital town halls where everyone behaves in a civil manner as sign-up requires registration with government ID and use of full government name.

It wouldn't be a blog platform like twitter but governments need to invest in cyberspaces or they'll all be run by corporations that gives them unreasonable amounts of power to control discussions.

I think it's a good thing yeah. 16 year olds can join the military and pay taxes if they work, so they should have a choice in what government to elect.

From 16 a British person can bear much of the responsibility of an adult (with some caveats) but receives none of the political rights in return. That's always seemed incongruous to me, that someone can say, start a family, but have no say over their future.

It certainly seems much bigger change than messing with the edges, I don't think any extension of the franchise could be seen as minor.

It think it's an important step in the right direction, but yes we do need to go a lot further in other ways also.

Don't let perfection get in the way of progress.

We know the system is broken, but the people with the power to fix it have no interest in fixing it. At least they're improving it in some way, makes a change from the usual "and then it got worse".

I see it as 16 year olds are the most easiest to manipulate on social media, and that this does not bode well for progressive politics.

At the same time, what's the actual peak age of "can't be manipulated on social media", and as blacknight says below - if they can work and die for our country at that age, they might as well be allowed to vote

Messing at the edges of the broken system is a good thing. Not as good as fixing things properly. Still a good thing.

If it lowers the average age in the parliament, that would probably be a good thing, even if the UK is not the worst from what I can see.

In the UK the average age is around 50 according to: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-trends-the-age-of-mps/

Compared to the US where the senate is a bunch of pensioners average of 64, and the house is 57: https://fiscalnote.com/blog/how-old-118th-congress