Labour’s plan would be a hammer blow to British identity
ANATION without effective borders or meaningful citizenship is not a nation at all. It is just a land mass inhabited by a fluid, disconnected population that lacks any real sense of shared belonging or mutual trust.
Tragically, Britain is already heading that way, as mass immigration hits record levels.
But the trend could intensify dramatically if Sir Keir Starmer is able to form a government after the next general election, either with his own majority or a coalition with the Lib Dems.
In both these cases, he plans to embark on a wholesale transformation of the electoral system that could lock the Tories out of power and create a permanent institutional bias towards his party.
In 1953, after an uprising against the East German communist regime, the playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote satirically that the government, rather than demanding renewed loyalty from the public, should simply “dissolve the people and elect another”.
Something of that spirit is found in Labour’s cynical policy, which involves a massive extension of the franchise to teenagers and non-British citizens.
Labour now talks grandly of the need to “strengthen our democracy”, but its measures have a much baser motive.
Far from invigorating civic engagement, their purpose is to drive up the Labour vote. Sir Keir’s blueprint represents gerrymandering on an epic scale.
In its crude partisanship, it will not only fuel disillusion and division, but will be a hammer blow to the very concept of British identity.
HE ADMITTED this week that Labour is considering giving the vote to all EU nationals living here. Such a step would be the biggest expansion of the electorate since universal suffrage in 1928, for the total number of
EU citizens settled here for the long term is estimated to be at least 3.4 million.
This huge army of new voters would be a decisive factor at future elections – precisely why Labour backs the change, since foreign nationals are far more likely to back Sir Keir’s party than the Tories.
The same crude calculation helps to explain why Labour is so enthusiastic about mass immigration – a sure way to push up its urban support.
As the independent-minded Labour MP Chris Mullin admitted in his 2004 diary: “We’ve barely touched the rackets that surround arranged marriages. What mugs we are”, but, he continued, the political difficulty was that so many “Labour seats depend on Asian votes”.
The influence of EU nationals would ensure the whole question of Brexit would be reopened, another reason for Sir Keir – Jeremy Corbyn’s
Remainer-in-chief – to support their enfranchisement.
Tightening its stranglehold on office, Labour could extend the vote to other migrant residents in Britain, adding a further six million to the electoral rolls.
Labour councillor Lara Parizotto of the Migrant Democracy Project claimed this week that Sir Keir assured her in 2021 that he was “very supportive” of widening voting rights to “every resident” and “every nationality”.
No other country in Europe allows foreigners to vote in national assembly elections, no matter how long they have been settled. It would be absurd to allow our government to be chosen by people who have no stake in our nation or whose interests are inimical to ours.
Sir Keir argues that we should embrace those who have “put down roots” in Britain, but if such migrants really want to demonstrate their commitment, they should become British citizens. It is not hard. After all, 194,000 people were granted citizenship last year.
But vote harvesting matters far more than national allegiance to Labour’s opportunists who aim to distort the franchise for their own selfish ends.
THAT impulse is highlighted in their ridiculous call for 16 and 17year-olds to get the vote, based on a justified belief that naïve youngsters – with no proper experience of work or financial responsibility – are more likely to back progressive candidates.
Why should teenagers get a direct say in running our country, when under-18s are deemed too immature by the state to buy alcohol or tobacco, or marry or take out a credit card or get a tattoo or use a sunbed?
Supporters of this extension – which would add 1.5 million voters – point out that under18s pay income tax if they make sufficient money, but that applies to earners at any age.
Sir Keir displayed his contempt for democracy in how he agitated to reverse Brexit.
Now he is doing the same again with this squalid attempt at vote-rigging.
‘Sir Keir’s blueprint represents gerrymandering on an epic scale’