This is a giant step towards a one-party state...
Sir Keir Starmer told a conference at the weekend that he expects the next general election to get ‘dirty and nasty’. Now we know what he means.
if Labour wins next year, Starmer plans to rig future elections by giving the vote to millions of EU nationals, plus millions more 16 and 17-year-olds.
The plan would mean that 3.4million EU citizens with ‘settled status’ would be eligible to vote. Another 2.6million are ‘pre-settled’ and would doubtless be fast-tracked by Labour.
At a stroke, the electorate would be packed with some 6million foreign voters: More than enough to swing any general election – or a new EU referendum.
Enfranchising under-18s would add another 1.4million voters to the electoral roll.
The audacity of this expansion of the franchise – the biggest for nearly a century since 1928, when most women got the vote – is exceeded only by its cynicism.
For Sir Keir knows, of course, that the great majority of these extra votes would go to him.
Handing the right to vote to foreigners and mid-teens would tilt the delicate balance of British politics
‘We know he would love to reverse Brexit’
permanently in Labour’s favour. We know that Sir Keir would dearly love to reverse Brexit. Several million extra votes would enable him to pull off just such a coup within a few years of taking power.
Labour’s plan would also be a giant step towards a one-party state. Many on the Left have looked enviously north of the border, as the SNP lowered the Scottish Parliament’s voting age to 16 and extended it to EU citizens too.
Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, may now be disgraced and discredited, but – when it comes to her electoral initiatives – Labour is following her example.
Sir Keir’s electoral stitch-up is so transparently self-interested that it amounts to political chicanery – ‘dirty and nasty’ indeed.
Yet the fact that it fails the smell test doesn’t mean it could not happen. Most people will instinctively know that Labour’s plan is wrong. But why?
Giving votes in general elections to EU residents would be a bad idea even if it were reciprocal. But it is not. Last year the European Court of Justice ruled that UK citizens living in France cannot vote even in local elections, let alone national ones.
That ruling applies to all other EU countries apart from ireland because it has a century-old reciprocal agreement on voting with Britain.
Why should the UK give votes to EU nationals who live and work here, when Brussels refuses to do the same for British expats in Europe?
A more fundamental reason for rejecting Labour’s plan is that voting is the most basic of democratic rights, which ought to be granted only to British citizens with a permanent stake in the future of this country. My Polish daughter-in-law gained UK citizenship, not just by living here for a decade and mastering English, but by demonstrating her knowledge of and commitment to Britain, by – among other things – making a solemn oath of allegiance to the Crown.
To give the vote to foreigners who have done none of this, but merely have ‘ settled status’, is to devalue the very idea of citizenship.
We all loathe the idea of ‘ health tourists’ – visitors who come here only to take advantage of the NHS. So why create ‘voting tourists’? As for giving the vote to 16 and 17-yearolds, this preposterous proposal ignores the fact that they are still adolescents and considered insufficiently mature to enjoy many of the rights and freedoms that over-18s enjoy.
We don’t allow under-18s to gamble, to buy alcohol or tobacco, or even to have a credit card. in England and Wales, it is not possible to get married until the age of 18.
These and many other legal prohibitions exist because, in law, 16 and 17-year-olds are not adults but children, who need protection and cannot be held fully responsible for their actions.
That is why courts are much more lenient in sentencing minors. By the same token, however, under-18s should not expect to enjoy the same rights as adults. That includes the right to vote.
By dangling this precious right in front of youngsters who cannot yet properly grasp its significance, Sir Keir shows that he cares nothing for their welfare but everything for his own party political interest.
Lowering the voting age is a policy he has inherited from Jeremy Corbyn – the most dangerous man ever to lead a major party in Britain.
And let it never be forgotten that Sir Keir campaigned to put Corbyn into No 10.
it is chilling to imagine the consequences of giving the vote to EU citizens and children. The temptation to promise them favours at the expense of others would be overwhelming.
it’s easy to imagine Left-wing politicians lifting border controls to please EU voters. Or wooing teenagers with a bonfire of age restrictions on alcohol, cigarettes, betting and nightclubs.
Britons are rightly proud of having exported liberty under the law to the whole world. But if Labour’s rigged the electoral system, it would be a sinister kind of euthanasia for the oldest parliamentary democracy on Earth.
‘Dirty and nasty’? The words are yours, Sir Keir.
‘In law, 16 and 17-year-olds are children’