It doesn’t seem very democratic of the UK to deprive British citizens of their national right to vote after 15 years overseas, when other democratic countries such as the US, France , Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal etc. don’t.

This begs the question of how democratic is the UK compared with other advanced industrial countries?

Interestingly enough,  in “How Democratic is the UK? The 2012 Audit” , author Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Executive director of Democratic Audit and Senior lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Liverpool, discusses the findings of a range of statistical measures used to assess how well the UK compares with other established democracies.
He concludes that in virtually every case the UK ranks below the EU-15 and OECD-34 average for advanced industrial nations.

Indeed, although available indicators suggest representative democracy is in decline in all established democracies, the study indicates that the UK compares especially poorly on most measures.

It would appear, therefore, that although the UK is consistently categorised as a “full democracy”, it has room for improvement compared with its peers, including under- representation of its overseas citizens via the 15-year-limit on their national voting rights. Ironically the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has also drawn the British government’s attention to their lack of action regarding the Court’s ruling on restoring voting rights for those British nationals currently serving prison sentences in the UK.

WWII veteran Harry Shindler still has his right to vote challenge to the British government before the ECHR.  If you agree our case , we’d appreciate you adding your vote here in support of our campaign to remove the 15-year-limit on British citizens overseas such as him.