There are 2.5 million non-British citizens from Nigeria, Pakistan, India and elsewhere, people here on temporary work visas, family visas and student visas, who have the right to vote in parliamentary and local elections due to their Commonwealth links. That is wrong, and a Reform government will change the law so that you must be British (or Irish) to vote in a British election. A Reform government would pass what we are terming the Elections Integrity Bill, which would end Commonwealth voting, restrict postal voting, end foreign-language election materials and crack down on coercive ‘family voting’.
Mass immigration under both the Tories and Labour, particularly into urban areas of Britain, has meant that electoral campaigns are now routinely conducted in foreign languages, often with their central messaging focused on issues – Palestine being one example – over which the elected politician does not even have any mandate.
In many of our urban areas, elections have become proxies for foreign conflicts and sectarian interests, and campaigning is reflective of this, with literature often published in foreign languages. When elected as a local councillor in Leeds, Mothin Ali, former deputy leader of the Green Party, said his election to the council was a ‘win for the people of Gaza’ and ‘we will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine.’
Another very notable change to our voting system has been the prolific rise in postal voting. A quarter of all votes cast in the last general election were by post. This is an abuse of a system designed for people who are genuinely, physically unable to get to the polling station. It enables the harvesting of votes within communities to support sectarian causes. Reform will restrict postal votes to members of the Armed Forces and diplomats serving away from home, and to people genuinely unable to vote in person due to severe physical disability.
If we are to fix our country, we must also fix our democratic process and ensure that it remains free and fair, and that participation in it is conditional on being a British national.
We know why Labour has refused to tackle these issues; postal and foreign national voting has greatly benefited them electorally.
Why the Tories did nothing about it over the last 14 years, when at one point they had an 80-seat majority, is anyone’s guess: but the same could be said of almost everything, which is why they don’t deserve to be anywhere near office again.
Thomas Gargrave for Reform UK
