BRYONY GORDON: Keir Starmer’s newest lunacy has tipped me over the sting. I now see he is only a clown in donated designer garments

Everyone has their limit with Sir Keir Starmer‘s Labour Party, and I think I just reached mine.

For some it was the reversal of the winter fuel allowance, for others it was the betrayal of the Waspis, and for many more it was the so-called tractor tax that blew a hole in their belief that this Government was anything other than a bunch of self-serving cronies out to line their own pockets. 

But the thing that tipped me over the edge, and persuaded me that Sir Keir is no more than a clown in donated designer clothing, was when a minister announced last week that the party really did intend to give children the right to vote.

‘We have a manifesto commitment to look more broadly at our elections regime in this country,’ said Lucy Powell, the Commons leader, in an interview. ‘From things like votes at 16, which we’re committed to, but also to make sure our electoral system has got that integrity and is robust from many of the new issues [we] face undermining our democracy and our elections.’

Integrity! Commitment! Undermining our democracy! The words rolled off her tongue with no apparent sense of irony.

Of all the pre-election promises to decide to actually stand by, giving 16-year-olds the vote seems by far the silliest. Though perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising, given that GCSE students who can vote for no more than the winner of I’m A Celebrity are just about the only group of people in the country the Government hasn’t managed to isolate during the past few months.

In the run-up to the election, Sir Keir explained why he was in favour of lowering the voting age: ‘I want to see both 16 and 17-year-olds [vote]. If you can work, if you can pay tax, if you can serve in your Armed Forces, then you ought to be able to vote.’ To which I say: What a load of rot.

I have nothing against 16-year-olds. I was even one myself once. Which is why I think those under the age of 18 shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near polling stations.

Because let’s face it; while the Prime Minister is right that you can join the Army and get a job, the truth is most humans turn 16 in a blaze of hooch, hormones and horny desperation to lose their virginity. And while we’ve all heard various rumours about what goes on in the bars of the Commons, I hardly think these conditions are conducive to serious political thinking, do you?

The summer I turned 16, John Major was prime minister and the Tory government was at its sleaziest, the cash-for-questions scandal dominating the news.

But I had to look that up just now, because my predominant memories of 1996 do not involve being furious with MP Neil Hamilton. Instead, they involve dancing drunkenly to the Spice Girls while drinking alcopops, and losing my virginity to a spotty oik I genuinely believed to be a dreamboat, the Atlanta Olympics in the background.

Had I been able to vote, and had there been an election, I probably would have waltzed into the polling booth and stuck a cross next to the Monster Raving Loony Party, or the Socialist Alliance party (which I think is the same thing). Then I would have gone home and wept about the fact the spotty oik had been spotted snogging my best friend Katie.

I look back at that girl and want to tell her to stop trying to go so fast, to slow down and breathe and cherish those final moments of childhood. I want to tell her that it’s OK not to know what she wants to do with her life, let alone who she wants to run the country. 

I want to say: You have the rest of your life to have sex with men who don’t deserve you, to fret over big important things like where you stand on the subject of welfare or immigration.

At 16, I thought I knew everything. But a true sign of being a proper grown-up is accepting you know nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Back in 1996, I was too young to be voting, too young to be having sex, too young to be worrying about anything other than whether I would pass my GCSEs.

Now, at the age of 44, and the mother of an almost-teen myself, my only wish for my child is that she actually gets to be one, for longer, rather than hurrying through it, as we are often prone to do. The speed at which we scramble into adulthood usually comes at the expense of childhood, which is, ironically, the place we learn all our most formative and important tools for life. 

Which is what really troubles me about this plan to lower the voting age. Because at a time when kids are growing up faster than ever, exposed to all the horrors of the world through their increasingly digital lives, do we really want to add in the responsibility of being able to vote?

It seems strange to me that, just a month after another Labour minister, Peter Kyle, spoke of the possibility of a ban on social media for under-16s, the same Government would think these children old enough to go to polling stations.

So what’s it to be, Keir? At the grand old age of 62, you’d hope our Prime Minister would know that one of his most important jobs is to protect children, rather than rushing them headfirst into the dizzying world of adulthood.

Dark arts of ‘astroturfing’

One of the many disturbing things about Blake Lively‘s legal complaint against Justin Baldoni is how easy she says it was for him to turn the general public against her. 

Lively’s legal complaint accuses her It Ends With Us co-star of sexual harassment and alleges his PR team orchestrated a smear campaign through a technique known as ‘astroturfing’ – spreading rumours through untrue social media posts that appear to be from ‘normal’ people, which his team denies. 

How frightening it is that we would rather believe a woman is ‘difficult’, than a man is a disingenuous creep.

I love Robbie even more as a CGI chimp!

I can’t be the only person who’s completely intrigued by the Robbie Williams biopic, Better Man. The former Take That star was my first childhood crush – I used to make everyone call me Mrs Robbie Williams – and I think I only love him more now that he’s agreed to be portrayed as a giant, performing chimpanzee!

Poor Rochelle Humes, on her 12th exotic break of the year, and being holiday-shamed by followers who are sick of seeing snaps of her on beaches. ‘Why can’t you stay at home?’ asked one person when the This Morning star posted a picture with husband Marvin on a yacht in Dubai. 

But as I write this from the beach just around the corner from Rochelle, all I will say is: If I could afford a break like this 12 times a year, I’d do exactly the same.

Why I can’t kick coffee

Researchers have found that people who drink more than four coffees a day have a 17 per cent lower chance of head and neck cancers. 

Good news for coffee lovers like me – because while I’ve given up cigarettes and alcohol, my obsession with flat whites is the one addiction I can’t seem to kick.

Confidence clinic

Winter is a miserable enough time without deliberately setting out to deprive yourself of things. 

So if you’re making resolutions this New Year, think about what you want to do more of, rather than what you want to cut out. It could be exercise, or seeing friends, but whatever it is, focus on the positives.