Over the past year, as the controversy over the Government’s voter-ID rules ebbed and flowed, critics accused the Tories of trying to deny the franchise to young people and the less well off.
The new requirement under the Elections Act 2022 to provide a photo will be tested on a huge scale in the general election this year, amid fears the change is a form of US-style “voter suppression”.
On Tuesday this week, another possibly momentous change from the same legislation came into effect. But although it could have a significant impact on our politics, it barely registered a media mention.
Thanks to a statutory instrument that was approved by Parliament almost unnoticed, an estimated three million Britons who have lived abroad for more than 15 years gained the right to vote in UK elections.
British expats will now have a “vote for life”, no matter how long they live overseas, a reform that brings the UK into line with the US, France, Italy and Canada.
Those who want to take part in Parliamentary elections can register at the last British constituency in which they lived. The reform gives them a say over policies that directly affect many expats, ranging from immigration to healthcare and pensions.
The scrapping of the “15 year rule”, which put a time limit on voting rights for those who emigrated, followed a long campaign by World War Two veteran Harry Shindler, a Brit who stayed in Italy and rebuilt his life there after the Allied landings.
The change also delivered on a promise in the 2019 Tory manifesto, but it faced opposition from Labour. Why? Because the party felt it was unfair that people with little connection to this country, who may have moved a long time ago and not used any services or paid any taxes in decades, should get the same voting rights as those who live in the UK.
The contrast was stark. Labour is actually planning to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 and can expect to draw on support from the youth vote. The Tories were accused of hoping that the new influx of expat voters, many of them older people, would shore up their own seats.
As it happens, for this election at least, the upshot of the changes may be a classic case of unintended consequences for the Conservatives. Unlike the traditional image of expats being typical Tories, the Brexit referendum radicalised many of them against the party, with many becoming Remain supporters.
Moreover, expats appear unhappy with Rishi Sunak’s changes to visa rules for spouses and other policies. It’s perfectly possible that giving expats votes for life could end up fuelling a backlash against his Government at the next election.
Time-limited voting rights for expatriates were introduced by the Conservatives in 1985. The time-limit on the overseas franchise was increased under the Conservatives in 1989 from five to twenty years after leaving the UK, but reduced by Labour in 2000 to the current “15-year rule”.
But academics at Sussex University surveyed Britons living in the EU in early 2020 and found that Brexit “clearly turned them against” the Tories. Just 17 per cent of those who voted for the party in 2015 and then to Remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum – some 95 per cent of all 2015 EU-based Tories – still supported the Conservatives in 2019.
Even among former Brexit-supporting expats, the Tories’ reputation has been hit by the way the divorce from the EU has worked in practice. This newspaper has had several accounts of “Bregret” among Leave-voting Brits, whose second homes in Europe are now less attractive.
However, few expect a large number of the new eligible voters to make a huge difference in individual seats. In 2019, around 200,000 people were registered as overseas voters out of an estimated 1.2m who were eligible at the time – but they made little impact as their vote was spread over 650 constituencies.
Yet the real story behind the Tory changes is not so much about electors, but about the way the law now allows overseas residents to donate huge sums of cash to British parties. That’s because voter registration rights come with rights to make donations.
The legislation to expand the franchise could have been amended to restrict donations to those who had very recently lived in the UK. Instead, at a stroke, the Conservatives have guaranteed that a handful of wealthy individuals who choose to spend their whole life abroad can bankroll their campaigning.
That in itself is perhaps as significant as the more high profile voter-ID rule changes. And it’s why Labour will probably want to repeal this legislation even sooner than some suspect.
Brexit-regretting ex-pats are ready to punish the Tories in next election
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19.01.2024
Over the past year, as the controversy over the Government’s voter-ID rules ebbed and flowed, critics accused the Tories of trying to deny the franchise to young people and the less well off.
The new requirement under the Elections Act 2022 to provide a photo will be tested on a huge scale in the general election this year, amid fears the change is a form of US-style “voter suppression”.
On Tuesday this week, another possibly momentous change from the same legislation came into effect. But although it could have a significant impact on our politics, it barely registered a media mention.
Thanks to a statutory instrument that was approved by Parliament almost unnoticed, an estimated three million Britons who have lived abroad for more than 15 years gained the right to vote in UK elections.
British expats will now have a “vote for life”, no matter how long they live overseas, a reform that brings the UK into line with the US, France, Italy and Canada.
Those who want to take part in Parliamentary elections can register at the last British constituency in which they lived. The reform gives them a say over policies........
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