Sir Keir Starmer has scaled back his 2020 pledge to extend voting rights to all EU nationals, instead limiting politics to long-term residents, according to Labor officials.
During his leadership campaign three years ago, the Work The leader has promised to give all EU citizens with “established status” in the UK a vote in the general election, in a bid to woo party members who support the Rest.
“We need long overdue security for EU citizens,‘ he said at the time. There are currently 3.4 million EU nationals in Britain with established status and a further 2.6 million with ‘pre-settled’ status.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the full pledge would be in Labour’s manifesto ahead of next year’s general election, angering Tory MPs who accused Labor of “gerrymandering”.
But StarEU allies said on Sunday the claim was “grossly exaggerated” and that the policy would not apply to all EU nationals.
Instead, Europeans living in the UK would only be allowed to vote if they had paid tax in Britain for a certain number of years, officials said, adding details of the policy were available. still under development.
Even the idea of a limited extension of voting rights to long-term British EU residents would be controversial, however, given that migrants are seen as more likely to support Labor than the Tories.
Labor also wants to extend voting to 16 and 17 year olds who are more likely to vote for left-wing parties.
David Jones, a Tory MP and former Brexit minister, said the move was a “clear attempt to gerrymander the voting system in the UK”.
“Even when we were in the EU, EU nationals here could not vote in general elections in this country,” he said. “It doesn’t make any logical sense now that we’re gone.”
A Conservative spokesman described the policy as an attempt by Starmer to lay the groundwork for a return to the EU. “Allowing millions of foreigners to vote is Sir Keir Starmer’s admission that he does not trust the British people.
“These are not rights that British citizens living in the EU have or EU nationals in the UK have ever had,” he said.
Jonathan Reynolds, shadow business secretary, told Sky News there was “case to expand the franchise”.
But he added: ‘I don’t think changes in the way the British state works, in the way democracy works, should ever be viewed through a party political lens. It should be about what is good for the country.
With regard to local elections, EU citizens who had been living in the UK since before Brexit retained their right to vote.
But those who have arrived since December 2020 can only vote in local elections where there are reciprocity agreements with other countries. So far, the UK has negotiated such mutual voting agreements with Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and Poland.
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