Keir Starmer urges Boris Johnson to let EU nationals in UK vote in future general elections
2 min read
Keir Starmer is calling for EU nationals living in the UK to be granted full voting rights in future elections.
The Labour leadership frontrunner made the intervention ahead of the UK’s departure from the EU on Friday, branding the way the three million European migrants have been treated in the last three years as “shameful”.
EU nationals are currently able to vote in local government elections, as well as mayoral and police and crime commissioner votes, but are unable to take part in general elections.
Writing for the Guardian, Mr Starmer said: “The government should give all EU nationals living in the UK full voting rights in future elections.
“The way the 3 million have been treated over the last three years is shameful. We were never just ‘tolerating’ EU citizens living in this country.
“They are our neighbours and friends and families. To see their status in doubt devastates not just our sense of justice but of fellowship.”
The Shadow Brexit Secretary, who strongly supported the case for a second referendum, also urged that leave-remain divide in the UK “must end.”
“Defining people by how they voted in June 2016 merely upholds a divide that we must overcome. There are no leavers or remainers any more. In 2024 there will be no leave or remain constituencies,” he added.
And in a rallying cry to Labour members, he warned the party “cannot afford” to lose a fifth election in a row.
“I will move our party on from the division of the past and remake our party as a democratic movement that faces outwards towards the country, not inwards on itself,” he said.
“Endless Conservative government is not inevitable. I’m here to lead Labour to victory because I know that another future is possible if we come together and fight for it.”
The UK will leave the European Union at 11pm on Friday, in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson has hailed as the “dawn of a new era”.
Meanwhile Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the country must build a “truly internationalist, diverse and outward-looking Britain.”
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