Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has said that it will take steps to prevent non-English speakers from voting in British elections, restrict mail-in ballots, and rescind voting rights from Commonwealth citizens in a bid to reverse some of the impact of mass migration on UK democracy.
Reform MP for East Wiltshire, Danny Kruger, has tabled amendments to the Representation of the People Bill, which he said Reform UK would enact if given power at the next general election, should the left-wing Labour government fail to implement them.
Kruger, a former member of the Conservative Party who has been given the brief of untangling the Blairite deep state with the aim of returning power to the British people and their representatives in Parliament, said that trust in the current voting system has been eroded as a result of mass migration and thus needs to be reformed to reflect that the United Kingdom is one nation.
“We increasingly see elections being fought on ethnic and sectarian grounds, with appeals in foreign languages, often for causes – Kashmir, Gaza – that are nothing to with Britain or the remit of the politicians being elected. We will insist that all regulated election material must be in languages that are native to the British Isles,” Kruger said.
The lawmaker added that around 2.5 million non-British citizens from the Commonwealth, a collection of former imperial holdings and territories with continued links to the UK, including countries like India, Nigeria, and Pakistan, are allowed to vote in British elections if they are living in the country. Kruger said that a Reform government would revoke the privilege and restrict voting to British and Irish citizens.
“Voting is a conditional right – conditional on membership of the British nation, on independence from undue influence, on understanding the democracy you are part of. These conditions used to be implicit; due to mass migration we need to make them explicit,” Kruger remarked.
Additionally, Reform’s Election Integrity Bill would roll back the widespread proliferation of mail-in voting, which Kruger described as a “flagrant abuse of a system designed for people physically unable to get to the polling station.”
The Reform MP said that around one in four votes at the last general election were submitted by post, which he claimed “enables the harvesting of votes by community elders in support of sectarian causes.”
Therefore, the party would look to limit postal voting to members of the British Armed Forces, diplomats serving abroad, and those who are “genuinely unable to vote in person”.
Finally, Kruger said that the election reforms would bar so-called “family voting”, in which typically an older male in often Muslim families accompanies his wife or daughters into the polling booth to ensure they vote the family line, thus facilitating sectarian voting. Independent observers reported widespread instances of such family voting in the recent special by-election in the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton earlier this year.
“We will empower officials in polling stations to insist people vote alone – and if they plainly can’t understand the voting system, their ballot will be set aside altogether (with the right of appeal to a magistrate),” Kruger said.
Commenting on the proposals, Reform UK Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick said: “It should not be controversial to say Britain should be run in the interests of the British people.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage added: “Political parties in Britain should not be able to campaign in foreign languages. British elections should be for the British people.”