Nicola Sturgeon’s adolescent troubles

After the Derek Mackay scandal, you’d have thought the SNP would want to distance itself from 16 year-olds. Far from it, it seems, for the bairns of tomorrow are central to Nicola Sturgeon’s ambitions today. Support for independence is flagging. The public sector services are creaking. Calls for an investigation into the ferries fiasco are growing. So, if you are First Minister, how do you regain the initiative?  

The answer, apparently, is to let kids become MSPs too. For this weekend, the SNP unveiled their latest constitutional wheeze: reducing the minimum age of election candidacy from 18 at present to just 16 for Scottish parliament and local council elections. 

The move would bring it into line with the voting age for those elections, despite people still having to be 18 or over to vote in a general election. The plans would allow those under 18 to become MSPs at the next Scottish parliament election in 2026 and councillors at the local election due to be held the following year.