If voting in UK general elections is anything to go by, don’t get your hopes up that you’ll have a say

I’m assuming the news has reached you wherever you are, but in case it hasn’t: after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and after having said several times that it will happen over his dead body, Tony Blair has announced that the British people will, after all, get a vote on the proposed EU constitution, currently undergoing horse-trading – sorry, ‘being shaped’ – behind closed Brussels doors. The government hasn’t specified a date or a question yet, but an epochal decision is now to be placed before Britain as a whole. Or will it be as a whole? I phoned up the Foreign Office the other day to find out whether Britons living and working abroad will be allowed a vote. They didn’t know and said that it would “depend on how the referendum legislation will be drafted”, by which I took them to mean, “We haven’t thought about it yet.”

If voting in UK general elections is anything to go by, don’t get your hopes up that you’ll have a say. The Labour government has never been keen on British expats voting in UK elections. Although there is hardly any research into the matter, and no doubt many of you will be outraged at the mere suggestion, the assumption is that a preponderance of expats are of the Conservative persuasion. A couple of years ago, the government reduced the time-period during which Britons can vote back home to 10 years. It used to be 25. There was – and still is – a sizeable lobby which argues that the right to vote should be removed entirely. Given that governments of all persuasions are not averse to placing a discreet thumb on the scales when it comes to elections, I wouldn’t be surprised if British expats were excluded from an EU referendum.

I can see no principled reason for doing so. Take our cover feature this month. The EU Savings Directive is meant to be being agreed upon in some shape or form this month, with a first-stage implementation coming into effect in January next year. Now, EU legislation is, I know, somewhere to the south of having your dry-rot seen to in terms of excitement and interest. But this legislation will affect you – almost certainly all of you – if you bank or save offshore. And what is that famous saying about taxation and representation? Jurisdictions like the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have agreed to levy a ‘withholding tax’ on their offshore deposits. Your money is therefore going to be taxed because of a European Union law. You should have a vote in any referendum.

The battle over voting rights in general elections was half-won in that expats still can exercise theirs, albeit at a curtailed level. No doubt pressure brought to bear by the expat groups that organised themselves at the time to fight a zero-reduction made some difference. We’ll keep an eye on developments and write about it in the future to keep you informed. In the meantime, if you are British, you may exercise your democratic rights and nag the Foreign Office.

James Featherstone
Editor
jfeatherstone@ccplcemail.co.uk