I may not be the biggest fan of Keir Starmer, but the "British, Irish or Commonwealth citizen" requirement to vote and stand in parliamentary elections is out of date.
I am fairly sure that the ERG or the Daily Mail does not really want to extend the franchise to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, as is already the case, but not to Americans or Israelis, who do not currently have it.
So, while requiring parliamentary candidates to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, I would have no nationality qualification, simply as such, for voting.
But such a change should only be introduced with a mandate from the previous General Election.
I will be standing for Parliament again here at North West Durham next time, so please give generously. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
We get it. Having lost the British working class vote, Labour wants to import a foreign one. That was largely also what New Labour’s programme of mass immigration was all about.
ReplyDeleteNo, thanks. British nationality is obviously the only criteria for taking part in British elections (as nationality is the criteria to vote in any other country’s national elections). The clue is in the title: it’s a “national” election.
Labour is like the US Democrats, fiercely pro immigration because they’ve lost the white working class.
Except that British nationality is not the only criterion ("criteria" is a plural). Any Commonwealth citizen may vote and stand, including a citizen of Mozambique, which was never part of the British Empire in any way at all. When countries leave the Commonwealth, then a stroke of the Ministerial pen guarantees that their citizens remain voters and potential candidates in Britain. It happens more than you might think. Irish citizens may and do vote and stand throughout the United Kingdom. This time next week, and forever thereafter, Sinn Féin will be in government across all 32 Counties of Ireland.
DeleteI see that you are still peddling the Andrew Neather nonsense. Everyone has given up on that one. It never gained any traction even at the time. And one of the most interesting features of Britain since the referendum is that no one ever mentions immigration anymore, not even now that this, a Conservative Government with an enormous majority courtesy of the working class, is about to make it vastly easier to immigrate to Britain.
But then, there was no racial aspect to the Brexit vote. Most European immigrants are white. Most Commonwealth immigrants are not. Almost everywhere in the United Kingdom is predominately white, and most places are overwhelmingly so, including most of those which voted Remain, such as Northern Ireland, every local authority area in Scotland, and great tracts of the South of England. I would have to check this, but outside London, then the Leave-voting areas of England and Wales were probably more ethnically diverse than the Remain-voting areas. White British is the single largest ethnic group in every local authority area and every parliamentary constituency apart from the Nationalist-majority parts of Northern Ireland. There is no "white working class".