Giving votes to 16-year-olds will kill off the Conservative Party “for generations”, the party’s deputy chairman has said.
Lee Anderson made the admission in secretly-recorded comments at a meeting of Tory supporters.
Labour has said it will reduce the voting age from 18 to 16 if it wins the next election.
Speaking in September, a party spokesperson said: “At the age of 16, many young people are paying taxes, working, and engaging in all parts of society — it is right that they get a say in who governs them.”
But speaking at a ‘Lagers With Lee’ event at Cambridge Rugby Club, Anderson said reducing the voting age would guarantee the Tories would be unable to form a government for decades.
He said: “The Labour Party will bring in votes for 16-year-olds. I’m convinced they will.
“Now if they do that, you might as well just rip your memberships up now, because you’ll never see a Conservative, not in my lifetime, again.
“If you bring in voting for 16-year-olds we’re done for, you know, for generations.”
According to the Sunday Times, Anderson also claimed that the right-wing Reform Party had offered him “a lot of money” to defect to them.
But Reform leader Richard Tice told the paper: “Desperate Tories will make desperate lies to save their skin.”