A Lib Dem MP asked the prime minister yesterday to get the voting age reduced to 16. Matthew Green said at that age young people were thought old enough to marry, to have children, to pay taxes and to join the armed forces. "Yet they are not allowed to vote until they are 18," he expostulated.  Mr Blair, with all the weary wisdom of a man whose house contains several   teenagers, which can be like having a flying saucer full of space aliens living in your home, except that they say less and eat more, said: "I am not sure that all those things a 16-year-old can do, we'd always want them to do."   This was thought to be a reference to Euan Blair, who was found face down in Leicester Square at the age of 16, in a pose which suggested he had not spent the previous few hours mulling over his choice of candidate.   In this he resembled several MPs who, at much the same time of night, cannot attribute their fatigue to the fact that they have spent an age working out exactly which way to vote.   It was remarked at the time that Euan Blair's friends   appear to have deserted him.   This is not a problem for members of parliament. Kindly whips will pick them up from the floor, shout in their ears, and if necessary kick them all the way to the correct lobby.   Sometimes they wind up kicking members of the press as well, who are likely to be in a similar condition. (Though of course even while inebriated, we are always sober enough to write a coruscating 500 word denunciation of parents who let their teenage children get drunk in Leicester Square.)   The problem is that MPs themselves are now far too young. Just as one generation cannot remember the war, and a later one has no recollection of the winter of   discontent, so these young shavers have no memory of shroud-waving.   Shroud-waving was a proud tradition during the 1992-1997 Major government, a time which to most MPs seems as distant as the pre-Devonian period. This was nominally to do with the NHS, and was based on the assumption that ministers are personally to blame for every failure of the service, as if, like Roman emperors, they could end or save someone's life with a twitch of the thumb.   "Is the prime minister aware that my constituent Mr Brown went to the outpatient department for help with an ingrowing toenail, and was found five weeks later, his face a hideous green   and a nest of maggots feasting on his decomposed belly?" they would inquire.   The prime minister would reply that he would look into this particular case, but that hon members should be aware that the staff of the NHS did a magnificent job in difficult circumstances, and that the other party's plans would lead to a mass extermination which would make the Black Death look like a touch of flu.   Yesterday, Mr Duncan Smith waved the case of 94-year-old Mrs Rose Addis, who, we are told, had to wait days for a bed at a London hospital.   "Her clothes had not been changed. Her daughter had to borrow a bowl of water to wash the blood that had   become caked on her mother's hands and feet."   This was a superb example of traditional shroud-waving, as admired by connoisseurs as a majestic pass by a bullfighter.   Mr Blair did not disappoint. He gave a traditional reply to the flapping linen: "The Conservatives want to use these cases ... to run the NHS down. They want to say it has failed, therefore get rid of the health service on which people are depending."   In other words, the Tories complain about people getting poor treatment because they want to make sure they get no treatment at all.   A 16-year-old could see what nonsense that is, but then, thanks to Mr Blair, they don't yet have the vote.