Apparently non British, Irish, or Commonwealth citizens will not be allowed to vote in the upcoming EU referendum in the UK.
I haven’t read into the actual law on this, just the media coverage, so caveat emptor, but:
More than 1million foreigners living in Britain will be banned from voting in the EU referendum, the Conservatives have announced, in a significant boost to Eurosceptic campaigners.
It comes after Eurosceptic MPs confronted ministers over the issue amid concerns that pro-Europeans could effectively rig the result by giving EU citizens the decisive vote.
(source)
The language we use is important.
Isn’t it interesting that here we see people living in the UK described as ‘foreigners’ – setting up an instant division – whilst the Scottish Government during the independence referendum process spoke not of ‘foreigners’, but of ‘the Scottish people’, irrespective of where they were from originally?
Isn’t it interesting that the result of the independence referendum was based precisely on the votes of the people who lived there, and not some ethnic idea of what Scottishness is supposed to be? Isn’t it interesting that this wasn’t seen as ‘rigging the result’, but as an integral part of it?
I don’t believe in ethnic politics. I believe in civic politics. Great Britain is a fundamentally racist construct that needs to be dissolved. The sooner the better.