BHTJKJ Ballot box, hand placing a vote into a ballot box, voting with ballot box. Image shot 2010. Exact date unknown. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Alamy
Polly Toynbee rightly brands the Tory move to re-enfranchise British expatriates as “gerrymandering” (First photo ID, now votes for expats: the Tories are showing us exactly what election rigging looks like, 6 February). But the same applies to Labour’s efforts to prevent it. Both parties want to game our electoral system – one by enfranchising expats, the other by excluding them.
What Toynbee ignores are the constitutional and moral issues at stake. In Japan, like many other societies where dual nationality is unavailable, foreign permanent residents cannot participate in any elections. Denying UK votes to UK citizens resident in such jurisdictions thus renders them electorally stateless. Meanwhile, Japanese residents in the UK (who far outnumber British residents in Japan) have always retained full voting rights in Japan’s elections.
