Votes for Six-Year-Olds: Could Child Suffrage Revive Democracy? (David Runciman)

This week, guest presenter Sophia Smith Galer speaks to David Runciman, a podcaster and former politics academic, about his radical proposition to lower the voting age to six.

It’s a position that has been met with laughter, scorn, and even anger, but he believes it’s not just in accordance with our democratic principles - it could also help give our stale and fractious democracy a much-needed shot in the arm. David talks us through the history of the arguments about suffrage (some of which have echoes now in the debate around children), his work talking to children in schools about politics and voting, and how he thinks his radical proposal could shake-up democracy.

Next week, John Burn-Murdoch talks to the conservationist Derek Gow, one of the country’s leading Rewilders, who argues that we should be reintroducing indigenous but long-vanished species to the UK countryside.

We’ll be putting your radical questions to Derek for a Q&A episode, so please get in touch.

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Episodes of Radical are released every Thursday and Monday.

Series Producer: Rufus Gray Producers: Nathan Gower, Ivana Davidovic Digital Producer: Gabriel Purcell-Davis Technical Producer: Philip Bull Senior News Editor: Sam Bonham