UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
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Except there is a big difference in that these people choose to live abroad. They have chosen diminished influence of British politics over their lives so they should have diminished influence over British politics.
If they really want to influence politics here, then live here. It is not fair on resident, tax paying citizens to have non resident non tax paying ex pats making choices that may benefit them at the cost of others.
For example, elderly expats may choose to support a policy which significantly increases their pension to cover their overseas lifestyle at the expense of resident pensioners or increased taxes or reduced public services for resident voters. While this is very unlikely to be proposed or succeed, it is theoretically possible. I'm sorry but if I resign from my job should I still get to make demands of my former colleagues because I worked there for 30 years or still feel like an employee??
I just can't reconcile the thought "I don't want to live there anymore" with the thought "I deserve a vote in the country I left behind".
It was a little different when we were in the EU. But we are not.
If you still had a pension fund owned or controlled by your previous company you would - and should - still have some say in how that was managed. Having said that, I don't think the analogy between 'citizen' and 'employee' works that well. Citizenship is a fundamental legal right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human R ights, as are the rights and duties entailed by citizenship. It's not analogus to being an employee, which is fundamentally a transactional relationship.