Today two TCW writers give their views on the proposal being put at the Labour party conference to extend the vote to foreigners living in the UK. You can read Patrick Benham-Crosswell here.
WE are seeing the devaluation of voting in this country as the political class dishonestly try to cancel the outcome of the 2016 referendum. This devaluation is being continued by Labour for future national elections. Their latest proposal is the internationalisation of the right to vote in this country by extending the franchise to resident foreign nationals.
It is obvious why Labour are doing this. Their permanent problem is that in an increasingly affluent society they will always lose support when they keep promising to confiscate some of that affluence and express hatred towards its holders. It does not help them that they openly hate affluent and aspirational people, and seem happy to drive such people into the willing arms of other parties.
This proposal has to be seen in the context of Labour’s other ideals concerning unfettered freedom of movement from countries with corrupt political cultures. Labour are, in effect, looking to import an electorate, and bribe them with money appropriated from people and entities on Corbyn’s hate-list. This is gerrymandering at an extreme level, daring resistance by opponents through accusations of racism. It devalues citizenship but also national values, by saying that there are no such things. We have seen in the tortured bodies of poor girls in Rotherham what the outcome is of this national devaluation by this country’s quite unique overabundance of anti-patriotic intellectuals and officials.
It also recalls Brecht’s poem Die Lösung (The Solution), written in aftermath of the 1953 uprising in East Berlin which was put down by Soviet tanks:
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler
for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
If voters feel their voice is drowned out, especially by a surge of people lightly given the vote for the direct advantage of one party, they simply will not participate. Socialist dictatorship thrives on political apathy, epitomised by the habit of socialists to hold decision-making meetings at unsociable hours and for excessive duration, a tactic recently used in the abortive purge of Tom Watson. This is not the first time Labour has used immigration to shore up its vote: it was a political tactic of Blairites. However, with Corbyn as a potential Prime Minister, it would certainly be the last.
