No taxation without representation

That’s a political philosophy that few can disagree with (although its opposite does not and should hold true).  Yet the right of EU citizens to work, reside and travel in other EU states has resulted in a huge anomaly, where there is a very large gap between the EU’s  guarantee of social and economic rights and individual Member States’ vastly different interpretations of citizens’ (and non-citizen’s) political rights.

According to Eurostat there are some 16 million EU citizens living in EU countries other than the one of which they are a citizen.  16 million!  That’s around 3% of the population of the EU, the equivalent (roughly) of the population of the Netherlands, or more than the population of the EU’s   eight lest populous countries put together.   Let’s assume, at a conservative estimate, that 75% of these people are economically active  paying taxes in their country of residence. 

Yet to my knowledge there is not one single EU country that allows tax-paying, non-citizens, no matter how long established, to vote in its national elections.  This is a scandal.  It means that something like one in forty of the EU population is disenfranchised. 

The level of disenfranchisement may vary.  In many EU countries non-citizens are able to vote in EU, local and sometimes regional elections.  Citizens of some countries permanently retain their right to vote in their home countries.  (The French recognise that their ex-pat communities have specific interests and needs and so deserve dedicated seats in the Senate).  In others such as the UK this right is granted for a limited and somewhat arbitrary period of time (the controversial 15 year rule, which the last two Tory manifestoes have promised to abolish,  a promise that has not (yet) been delivered upon and could have made a decisive difference in  the 2016 referendum).  Germans, I understand, lose their voting rights as soon as they become ‘non-dom’.    I don’t know about the other 25 member states.

The EU seeks to harmonize economic and social rights, yet I believe this needs to be balanced by harmonising political rights, so that every EU citizen has the right to vote in all elections in one country or another.   My preference would be that people have voting rights in the country where they pay taxes (after say a certain qualifying period). ( Again this would have had a profound effect on the 2106 UK referendum).  But failing that they should retain their voting rights in their home countries.

The current situation represents a fundamental breach of human rights.  Yet no-one is talking about it.  And I think it is time we opened the discussion. 

Persistence pays

A few months ago I decided to register as a UK overseas voter. My decision to do so was based on the outcome of the last election and the subsequent possibility of being eligible to vote in a referendum on electoral reform. It is possible the only national election in which my vote will count (under the present first past the post, winner takes all, yah boo sucks system - the FPP-WTA-YBS).

I duly went to the registration website, downloaded an application form, filled it in, got a fellow Brit ex-pat to witness my declaration, sent the form back, went on holiday and then forgot all about it. Today I got an email from my former local electoral registration office saying that they couldn't find me on their lists. I immediately went to Wikipedia - worked out which election I would have last voted in and asked them to check the register for that year. And - hey presto - they found me. I'm now in the system..

Practical tips. British citizens living overseas can register for an overseas vote if they have been registered on a UK electoral roll within the past 15 years.
Visit 'about my vote'. Check the options, download the form and find the address of your previous electoral registration office.

Mind you - theres no guarantee you will get to use your vote. Eligibility for voting in the referendum has not yet been decided - and when a snap election is called it is highly possible that the ballot paper will not reach an overseas voter in time for them to return it. We can but try though.

Some updates

1. Technohobia A
Google has taken over blogspot and established a new log in procedure (which involves getting a new password). The whole procedure is so complicated I have twice aborted it. Which is at least partly why I haven't moderated comments or posted new entries recently.

2. Technophobia B.
My blog is increasingly being invaded by web-bots posting commercial messages as comments to my blog. They come at a rate of less than one a day and - because I have turned on my moderate comments function - it doesn't bother me too much. But if they keep coming I'm going to put up a character recognition defense (I know some of my readers use it on their blogs already).

3. The Polder Model A
Two of the largest parties in Dutch politics still can't decide whether to go into coalition with a politician who will appear in Court today on charges of inciting racial hatred. Surely someone who is facing such charges can't be a serious candidate for a position in a coalition government / the cabinet? Can he? I half-jokingly threatened to myself that I would a. Leave the Netherlands if Wilders became part of the government (it's a sign that this counry has lost its way). b. Hire and wear a burka for a week with a sign on it saying 'I don't belong here anymore' (in Dutch of course). In all likelihood I will just drift along with the silent and unprotesting crowds.

4. A Personal Aside
On which note I did spend Sunday drifting along with the silent and unprotesting crowds. I did what (it seems like) 90% of the population do on the first Sunday of the month and went shopping. Yes it was Koop-zondag (Shopping Sunday). I had an excuse - I wanted to buy a present for a friend's birthday - an obsure County and Western CD that I knew would be just right for him (Any C&W apart from Johnny Cash seems to be obscure in the NL - and some would say rightly so). I searched online and could not found it in anyone's stocks and the delivery timeline was way past his birthday so I thought a personal search wouldn't go astray. And much to my surprise I FOUND IT - in the fourth record store home entertainment store I went into. (And I only bought four CDs for myself - my once a year binge).

The Dutch Polder Model B
It's been interesting to compare Dutch politics with British ones over the past months. The UK parties were under pressure to form a coalition within a week of the UK election. Here they've toing and froing betwen different coalition options for nearly four months. (No-one seems to miss effectively not having a government). This week one of the main parties the CDA had an emergency party conference to seek the approval of their membership to go into coalition with the PVV. (I can't imagine - and didn't see - that happening in the UK). They got two thirds plus majority support. But - NOW GET THIS --two senior CDA MPs still have misgivings about the coalition and are seriously considering withdrawing their support for it saying that there was significant opposition within their party. (No Party Whips in Dutch politics to bully and cajole obviously ). If they do the whole project might still collapse.

A political aside...

Did anyone see see the Blair interview last night? Intended to promote his new book, it was probabaly only coincidentally shown the night before the Labour leadership ballot begins. (I 'caught' it rather than made a point of watching it).

He talked about the fundamental changes that New Labour made to British society. Curiously rebalancing the vast growth in inequalities in wealth and income that arose during the previous twenty years of Tory maladministration wasn’t among them.

Its curious to think that a Dutch coalition government containing neo-fascists is still likely to be more left wing than a 'socialist' one in the UK.

A shotgun wedding?

Relationship metaphors have abounded since it became apparent that no one single party could form a government. Much though it offends my tribal instincts that anyone should jump into bed walk down the aisle with the conservatives, the truth is that the UK now - for the first time in my life - and the first time since the Second World War - has a government which represents the interests of the majority of people who voted. That has to be a huge breakthough and should be applauded.
My guess is that there will be (more than) a few honeymoon tiffs as the two parties learn how to reconcile their differences. The interesting question is whether they will put aside a lifetime's habits of putting their own interests first and seeking to look good in public (by making the other look bad) or give priority to building a productive relationship. Time will tell.

A PS. Aparently at the first cabinet meeting Vince Cable broke the ice - and extended the relationship metaphor - by saying that some of his Indian constituents reminded him that arranged marriages work better than love marriages.

Between a rock and a hard place

May 5th (Liberation day here) and the UK General Election have come and gone. A pair of late nights - although the general election is not over yet. I cheered madly when I saw the Greens get the first ever MP under the unfair First Past The Post system. I was hoping for a hung parliament but never dreamed what a constitutional mess it would create. The LibDems have a real dilemma. One options is to get into bed with the Tories - who won the most votes and seats but can't form a government by themselves. This I guess would alienate some 75% of LiBDem voters - unless they saw it as being a marriage of convenience -and would alienate Tories and Labour voters if it were one. But there are too many policy differences - on Europe, taxation, immigration and defence for this to work well. Equally the Tories are heavily opposed to any form of PR (though may give way) as this would undermine their future chances of being a ruling party. The alternative of going with Labour, more attractive to most LibDem sympathisers, runs several different risks. The first is being seen by the press as shoring up a 'failed' government and leader (though the latter issue is less now that Gordon Brown has announced his resignation as PM). But above all the numbers don't add up. It would take a Rainbow Alliance (Lab, Lib Dem, the Democratic Unionists, SNP, Plaid and the Green) to push anything through and one couldn't guarantee the support of everyone (particularly the SNP). Mark reckons has blogged on this dilemma more extensively

For my English readers

If you are still undecided about how to cast your vote on Thursday please read this . It quotes David Cameron as saying that he joined the Tory party because, during the Thatcher years, he felt that 'they were his people.' Does one need to hear anything more? No matter how badly Labour has let down its supporters and constituents, compromised its principles and held power for a decade in which economic inequalities have increased, there is something much, much, worse lurking in the time-warp. But this is the threat that Labour always throws at people (like me) who are instinctively anti-Tory.

When the election was called I was tempted to impose a month long media black out on myself. I couldn't see any good result. A failed and tired Labour party or a return to the politics of ****ing the poor and appealing to greed? Maybe I am mistaken but I fail to see any thought behind Tory policies other than self interest, a misplaced belief in imperfect markets (that are supported by state institutions) and a suppressed desire to resurrect the days of Empire. (But it could be worse - at least they don't share Republicans' convictions that they 'have god on their side).

But old habits die hard (and I am a political and election junkie) and the possibility of a third party holding the balance of power caught my imagination. It offers the opportunity of changing British politics forever. Not just because it will change tribal behaviour and lead to government by consensus - but also because it will expose the cracks that exist within the Labour and Tory parties over issues such as equality and Britain's relationship with Europe. A hung parliament offers the opportunity to revitalise the two main political parties and drag them out of the 19th Century and into the 21st. Its long overdue.

Who knows, by the next election we might have genuine choices with a 'real' socialist leading the Labour party and a proper 'Little Englander' leading the Tories. At least the choices would be clearer.

Dutch elections

I was thinking of setting myself the challenge of a blog a day in March. I'm glad I didn't announce it because yesterday it fell by the wayside. I spent a lot of time looking at election results yesterday. Mixed news really. Geert Wilders' party did very well in the two councils where they stood. In Almere, a new town with hardly any immigrant population, they were the top party - but I guess they were playing to the fear factor. In Den Haag they managed second place - but the other parties are clear that they are not going to cooperate with them. So his party is in a strange place were they are setting the political agenda (with the other main parties drifting to the right) but where the other parties refuse to collaborate with a party whose main policy seems to be banning head scarves in publicly funded buildings. Strange - isn't a head shawl part of traditional Dutch women's dress? Perhaps no traditional costumes will be allowed in any building that receives state/municipal funding. I was in France in 2002 when Le Pen won a ticket to the two-way fight off for the Presidency. I heard the fear and outrage then and am quietly confident that this will also turn out to be a similar storm in a teacup (to use a very English metaphor)

On a different note the Green/Left party did really well. In Wageningen it increased its share of the vote to 18%, won an extra Council seat and became the second largest party on the Council. In Utrecht (the fourth largest city in the Netherlands) they won the most seats - so can set the agenda for building a coalition on the council. I always thought it was a groovy city.

Closer to home, in Wageningen, the leader of the party (D66) who won the most votes/seats used to be my landlady - for more than two years - and might well become mayor / leader of the council. Do hear the rustling of cheque books from the gutter press? Of course I have more integrity than that!

On politics

Tomorrow we have local elections across the Netherlands. One of the joys of living here is that the country has a system of representative democracy . That means you can vote FOR the party whose policies you support - rather than spending time trying to calculate how to vote AGAINST the party whose views and values you find most abhorrent. I have lost count of the times that I voted negatively in the UK to prevent one particular party gaining a seat. I resented that.

Here the main local issues are likely to be Sunday shopping and the proportion of social housing to be incorporated in new housing developments (the balance has been swinging towards the private sector in recent years). But with the recent collapse of the coalition government - more eyes are likely to be on what the local elections portend for the national election in June. Geert Wilders' anti-islamic party is drawing a lot of attention and public support at the moment - which is hugely worrying - even if that support might be more a protest against the main parties than anything else. They intend to keep their powder dry by only standing in two municipalities in these elections. So it will be hard to gauge the level of support they actually do have.