About a million Britons live for most or all of the year in Spain. Of these, 352,000 have registered at Spanish town halls as being fully resident. Hundreds of thousands of Britons live elsewhere across the European Union.Those who left the country in the past 15 years (the vast majority) can vote in UK elections. Most, however, do not bother. This is hardly surprising. They must send their postal vote to the place where they last lived in Britain. People now living in Torrevieja, Marbella or Barcelona thus end up voting for candidates who are only interested in, say, the problems of Luton, Lambeth or Dumfries. That is not fair to them. What do they care, or know, about hospitals, post offices and planned ring roads a thousand miles away? It is also not fair to the people living in those constituencies.British communities abroad have their own problems. In Spain, they worry about pensions, health rights, the bureaucratic problems they can face if they try to move home and the (exorbitant) price of consular services. Even the winter fuel allowance (yes, payable in some circumstances) matters to them. Many of those suffering the catastrophic effects of a weak pound would like Britain to be in the euro. Many more have problems with local housing laws that they insist break EU rules. These people would like MPs and the British government to take their problems seriously. Without an MP to turn to, however, the chances of anyone paying attention to them are decidedly limited.
Some say that Sarkozy is wooing French voters in London because they are rich and likely to vote for him. Conservatives may be tempted to think they can win votes the same way. But the political leanings of emigrant Brits cannot be taken for granted. To start with, most of those in Spain are not rich. Tory MPs with long memories recall the last time they wooed the Mediterranean fringe. It turned out that most voted Labour – because they thought the Tories would take their winter fuel allowances away.
Britain frets about immigration but cannot be bothered to think about emigration. It should do. Of the hundreds of thousands of diaspora Britons with the right to vote, only 12,800 are registered to do so. Some 200,000 Britons move abroad every year, according to a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research. About 10% of all Britons, or 5.5 million people, live outside the country. "The UK government's lack of attention to its large diaspora stands in contrast to the measures being taken in other countries," the study noted. "In the UK, talk of establishing a member of parliament for the Spanish costas, a new ministry for Britons living abroad or even a special parliamentary inquiry would most likely be laughed down."
Foreign governments care far more about these emigrants than any British government has ever done. We have happily created a Europe without borders, encouraging people to travel, live and work in other countries, but we have not changed our electoral system to reflect that. A whole generation of young professionals has also moved abroad to follow the natural career paths of a globalised economy. No one represents them, either, at Westminster.I have been sounding people out on the idea of "diaspora MPs" for the past year. MPs and diplomats I have spoken to worry about the impact on, in this case, relations with Spain. Imagine, they say, an MP who spends half of his life complaining to Spanish authorities about problems faced by expat Britons.That, of course, brings us to another possible solution. Why not allow Britons living in Europe to vote in the national elections of their host country? Unfortunately neither the UK nor any other country in Europe seems to want that. As a result, I live in Madrid and pay taxes to the Spanish exchequer but have no say in how my tax money is spent.And therein lies another problem. For not only am I prevented from voting in a Spanish general election, but, as I have lived abroad for more than 15 years, I have no right to vote in the UK either. I pay tax but cannot vote. Whatever happened to "no taxation without representation"? Other countries (such as Germany, I believe) allow their citizens to keep on voting until they die, wherever they live.We complain constantly of voter apathy and low election turnouts. There is one easy way to boost participation in elections. Just give a few hundred thousand voters in Spain an MP of their own.The truth is that rather than just one MP representing Britons living in Spain and elsewhere, there should be dozens (the average UK constituency has 74,000 voters). I would be happy, however, if we could just start with one (and perhaps the honourable member for southern Europe has a better ring). That would leave me with just one request. I pay my taxes – so can I vote too, please?
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