On 7 June 2015, an EU member state held a referendum on a political change, one that its proponents said would send a message to the world about how enlightened the country was, but its opponents said would erode the country’s national identity. When the result was declared, it was an emphatic ‘no’, with just over 70 per cent voting the proposal down, in an 87 per cent turnout, with those who would have most benefited from the change feeling undervalued or rejected.
No, as you will have gathered, it wasn’t ‘that’ referendum held in June the following year, but the one held in Luxembourg on extending voting rights in national parliamentary elections to foreigners resident in the country. Despite only being intended for those who had a) been resident for at least ten years and b) previously voted in either European or local elections, this went too far for many in a country whose national motto translates as ‘We want to remain what we are’.
Granted it did not have the ramifications that ‘other’ referendum had, but it illustrates, even in the EU, how many still believe that voting rights in national elections should be restricted to citizens of the country concerned. In addition, in countries like Ireland, despite the role of those in the diaspora in supporting the economy through remittances over the decades, there remains opposition, sometimes vehement, to giving them the vote, even from some in the diaspora itself.
On the other hand, eligible Irish citizens registered to vote in constituencies in Northern Ireland can enrol as overseas electors, but not ones in Great Britain, and even then, they need to prove they have been born in Northern Ireland, not just anywhere on the island, and eligible for British citizenship, even if they have no intention of ever holding a British passport.
And some believe that residence, not citizenship, should determine the right to vote, like the Conservative peer, and former Labour MEP, Lord Balfe. In 2022, he highlighted how his 75 year old sister, who had left the UK for Ireland as a child, would be able to elect the MP for Great Yarmouth, whereas EU citizens who had been living in the constituency for years would not, unless they were Irish, Cypriot or Maltese. Earlier in 2015, he had introduced a Private Member’s Bill to give all EU citizens the right to vote (and stand) in general elections.
The right of Irish and qualifying Commonwealth citizens in the UK to vote and stand in parliamentary elections, and vote in referendums, is a throwback to when all were considered British subjects. However, only with Ireland, still part of a Common Travel Area, is the right to vote, as well as live and work, largely reciprocal. British citizens resident in the Republic are eligible to register to vote in its general elections, though not stand in them; nor can they vote in presidential elections or constitutional referendums, or since Brexit, European elections.
Indeed, when the Irish government introduced legislation to allow them to vote in elections to Dáil Éireann in 1984, it was ruled unconstitutional, meaning a referendum had to held on amending the Constitution, to extend the right to vote to ‘such other persons in the State as may be determined by law’. Under the subsequent 1985 Act, this could be extended to citizens of any other state in the then EC, but only after that state had extended them to those of Ireland; none ever has.
Whereas in Luxembourg, the concern was that election results would be skewed by the large numbers of foreign nationals, who make up 46 per cent of the population, in Ireland, the concern has been that the Republic’s elections would face ‘swamping and tipping’ by the disproportionately large number of voters in the diaspora; even a proposal to give Northern Ireland MPs speaking rights in the Dáil in 2005 got as lukewarm reception in Dublin as it did in London.
In the UK, Wales has extended voting rights in its parliamentary and local elections to all foreign nationals with leave to remain, irrespective of nationality, as has Scotland. As for the right of Commonwealth citizens to vote in Westminster elections on historical grounds, this is increasingly tenuous, as they now include citizens of formerly Portuguese Mozambique, formerly German and Belgian Rwanda, and now, formerly French Gabon; why should their citizens in the UK any more deserving of this than Portuguese, German, Belgian or French ones with EU Settled Status?
* Ken Westmoreland is a member of the Taunton and Wellington Local Party.
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16 Comments
Voting in general elections should be for UK citizens only. It is for UK citizens to elect the representatives who will determine matters such as immigration, defence and foreign policy.
I imagine the wider public are not aware the commonwealth citizens can vote in UK parliamentary elections.
If there was a referendum on the subject in the UK I am 99% sure the result would be the same as Luxembourg.
The irony is that those voting in such a referendum would include the very people who would be disenfranchised, a case of turkeys taking part in a vote on Christmas; even if they weren’t in the majority, they could still tip the result in their favour.
In Australia, British subjects (in effect non-Australian Commonwealth citizens) ceased to be eligible to vote in federal elections in 1984, and the law was changed without a referendum. Those resident before then retain the right to vote, and have to do so, as Australia has compulsory voting.
On the other hand, Australians with dual citizenship are barred under the Constitution from standing in federal elections, and that can only be changed by having a referendum.
This article raises some interesting issues.
I think the guiding principle should be reciprocation. The UK should allow foreign nationals who are long-term residents (say over here for 3 years or more) in the UK to vote, if, and only if, the relevant foreign country extends the same right to Britons who are long-term residents of that foreign country.
The existing voting rights of Commonwealth citizens to vote should be abolished.
The changes should be made by Parliament. I detest referendums, and the only future referendum the UK should ever have should be to entrench a codified constitution when there is general acceptance by MPs that we need one.
Thanks Mohammed –
Luxembourg didn’t even need to call a referendum on this, though it’s put the government off revisiting the idea, and Ireland only called it because the legislation was ruled unconstitutional.
The Irish law basically says to other EU countries ‘if you give these rights to our citizens there, we’ll give it to your citizens here’, and no EU country has done so.
If and when we have an entrenched Constitution with a capital ‘C’, we should not require a referendum on every amendment on it, like the Australian one does, only on specific ones – unlike Barbados, which became a republic three years ago without a referendum, Jamaica is constitutionally required to hold one if it wants to away with the King as head of state or the Privy Council as the highest court of appeal.
As it happens, British citizens permanently resident in Jamaica are entitled to vote in its parliamentary elections, and potentially, in a referendum on constitutional change, timely in the light of this announcement – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/13/jamaica-king-charles-republic
I think the fundamental problem with this proposal is it risks destroying the principle of one person one vote. I have a vote in precisely ONE country – the UK, because that’s the country I live in and am a citizen of. If someone from – say – France who lives in the UK is given a vote in the UK while also retaining their vote in France, then they now have twice as many votes as me. That’s fundamentally unfair and anti-democratic. You could work round that with reciprocal agreements between countries to ensure that a person resident in a country of which they are not a citizen is allowed to choose either ONE country in which they are allowed to vote – but that’s a lot of bureaucracy for not a lot of gain, and it really begs the question – if you are sufficiently committed to a country to want to participate in its politics, then why don’t you apply for citizenship of that country?
It would be unfair and anti-democratic if we still had plural voting for people within the UK, under which property owners had an extra vote for every property they owned, even in multiple constituencies, while university graduates also had a vote in separate university constituencies, some of which had not one MP, but two or three.
But we no longer do, and no one is suggesting going back to that.
Thanks for an interesting piece. I view residency, say three years as sufficient eligibility for voting in our elections. I am not as certain for those who live permanently abroad though citizenship might allow it at least for a period.
@ Ken Westmoreland,
Your point about multiple voting being allowed in previous eras is irrelevant to the present day. We probably all do agree that property owners and uni graduates shouldn’t have multiple votes. At least no-one is suggesting going back to that.
So why suggest that anyone should have multiple votes but only if they are applied across international boundaries? ~
You either believe in the principle of one person one vote or you don’t.
Thanks Peter –
New Zealand allows non-citizens to vote after being resident in the country for at least a year if they are permanent residents or Australians, and they also have the right to vote from overseas, though need to return to New Zealand within 12 months in order to retain voting rights there, whereas New Zealand citizens have to return within 3 years.
The fact that New Zealand allows non-citizens resident in New Zealand to effectively have twice as many votes as its own citizens is interesting but doesn’t make the practice fair, ethical, democratic, or something we should be aiming to copy.
@ Ken,
There is effectively a “freedom of movement” agreement between New Zealand and Australia which is why Aussies and Kiwis end up having preferential treatment when living in each others’ countries.
This would, IMHO, be fair enough if they could only vote where they were registered at the time. Just the same as someone who moves between Northern Ireland and Great Britain can only vote once – in the place where they were last registered.
Both NZ and Australia are both sovereign countries, so the details have to be left to them.
However, for every NZ electoral law you might like to quote there will probably be at a hundred from other countries that you wouldn’t. As Simon points out, it is interesting to know how other countries’ voting laws are framed but it doesn’t mean we have to copy them.
@Simon R
We have not copied the practice, we have pioneered it, because of qualifying Commonwealth citizens having the right to vote. If you think they should no longer have that right, say so – as I said, giving it to people from countries like Mozambique which were never British colonies shows how ridiculous it’s becoming.
Ireland is more complex, so best to leave things as they are. As you said, trying to create restrictions would a lot of bureaucracy for not a lot of gain, so why not leave people to decide whether they exercise their rights in either country, both or neither?
@Ken Yes I would say that in principle, if you want the right to vote in a country then you should become a citizen of that country, and therefore Commonwealth citizens shouldn’t have the right to vote in UK elections. However, in practice the optics of removing that right to vote would be very difficult, and I’d probably stick it in the box marked desirable-in-principle but not worth the effort/too low a priority to change/too much more important stuff that needs doing right now. But I certainly wouldn’t be looking at giving voting rights to other non-nationals who don’t already have it. Having said that, I appreciate there are practical issues. Most obviously, applying for UK citizenship is too expensive: We need to change that so that naturalisation is based on commitment to the UK and not on financial means.
I also think in principle a dual national wishing to vote in the UK should be required to waive their right to vote in the other country they are a citizen of – so that, just like everyone else, they get to vote in ONE country, so we preserve the principle of one-person-one-vote. However once again, in practice, that’s probably too difficult/low priority to worry about right now: It’s not something I’d be spending Government time on when there are so many more pressing concerns.
@Peter Martin
It’s not a question of suggesting what anyone should have, it’s a case of what many people already have; nowhere did I suggest in my article that the UK should extend the franchise in general elections for non-citizens resident here any further than it has been, and consider enfranchising Commonwealth citizens an anachronism.
As for British citizens no longer resident here, whether you or I like it or not, the Elections Act 2022 gives them all the right to vote in the last constituency in which they were registered, however long they’ve been away from the UK.
The cynic might say that the Conservatives only did this because they think all Brits abroad will vote Tory, which perhaps explains why Labour were originally against giving them the vote in the first place, and that Labour have favoured giving all EU citizens the vote in the UK because it thinks they’ll vote Labour, but Keir Starmer ditched that idea before the election.
As for the Liberal Democrats, they’ve been arguing for Brits abroad to have their own parliamentary constituencies for some years, for example, there’d be an MP for Brits in Australasia, but hardly anyone else in the UK has supported the idea.
@Simon Thanks, I appreciate where you’re coming from, and the issue of citizenship and the cost of fees is a deterrent.
As it happens, there is now an Act of Parliament to give Irish citizens who have been in the UK for at least five years to register as a British citizen – https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/19/section/1 – though it’s a solution in search of a problem, as Irish citizens, unlike other EU/EEA citizens, can still live, work, study and vote here.
Personally, if I had moved to Ireland this time last year, I would have been eligible to vote in the Republic’s general election, but wouldn’t feel entirely comfortable doing so as a British citizen, and might choose to abstain until such time as I became an Irish citizen. As for voting in elections back home in the UK as an overseas elector, it’d depend on how I felt at the time.
@Peter Martin
My point about New Zealand was in response to Peter Hirst’s suggestion as to what he thought the UK could do, not what I thought the UK should do.
What other countries do is often a lesson in what not to do, and I have made this point to Liberal Democrats Overseas – just because France does something doesn’t mean Germany does, and just because North Macedonia did it doesn’t mean it was successful (it wasn’t).
If you think the idea of Brits in Australia or New Zealand being eligible to vote in Westminster elections decades after leaving the UK, is bad, especially after they’ve become citizens of those countries, you’ll hate the Liberal Democrats’ idea of them electing their own MP to Westminster, the honourable member for Australasia, voting in the House of Commons on matters that have limited impact on their constituents.
However, you’re safe for now!