‘Let’s stop holding general elections during term time’

Defeated Tory’s proposal for student voting

Elections should be held outside university term times and students should only be allowed to register to vote from their home, according to the defeated Canterbury Conservative candidate. Anna Firth, who lost out to the Labour’s Rosie Duffield in December’s poll, suggested the idea in an article for the Conservative Home website, claiming students had little interest in local issues.

She also acknowledged that the Tories’ position on Brexit was “toxic” among the young voters on campus.

Ms Firth argues that residents in university constituencies would welcome the idea of only permitting students to vote from their home address. “A practical response would be to ensure that all general elections take place outside termtime, preferably in September,” she writes. “Elections, however, are rarely entirely within our control even without the Fixed Term Parliament Act, so a fairer solution would be for students to vote only at their permanent home and not at their university address.

“This would be very popular with local residents. “Over the last few weeks I have received numerous emails from incensed permanent residents furious that their choice of MP has been made by part-time residents who will be gone by the next election, and who have little interest in long-term issues such better roads, schools and healthcare.

“With postal votes so easily and freely available, fortunately, there is no risk of disenfranchising students studying in far-flung universities.” She says the party struggled to win over students for a number of reasons.

“Not surprisingly, the national Brexit message was toxic in university seats, many of which voted strongly Remain,” Ms Firth writes.

But she said the party also failed to engage students on issues such as the environment and that the government needed to reassess its position on tuition fees, adding: “Given that 60% of student debts are unlikely to be repaid, tuition fees continue to disenfranchise millions of young people for no reason. “This and the punitive rate of interest on student loans, currently 5.4 per cent, needs to be looked at again.”

She says the party needed to welcome the next generation of voters “with an aspirational message of freedom, opportunity and progressive social change.”

And she said her party had failed to recognise the strength of the student vote: “Historically a low-turnout group, the last two elections have seen the university vote morph into a highly motivated Labour block vote.” The tightly-fought battle between the Conservatives and Labour in Canterbury saw Ms Duffield prevail with an increased majority of 1,836.

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