Green Party Slams Iain Dale's Call to Withdraw Irish Voting Rights

Press release from the Green Party in London:


Green Party Slams Tory's Proposal to Withdraw Voting Rights from
Irish in UK


The Chair of the London Green Party, Noel Lynch, has today hit out at calls from a prominent Tory for voting rights to be stripped from Irish people living in the UK(1). The call came in an online article from top Tory blogger and parliamentary candidate Iain Dale. In the article Dale described the right of Irish people to vote in UK elections as "an historical anomaly that should be cleared up" and asked "can someone explain to me why we allow
the Irish to vote here?". Lynch, who hails from Limerick and is a Green Party candidate for the London Assembly, blasted:

"Like most Tories this man does not have a clue about what he is talking about. Irish people living here pay UK taxes and are affected by UK laws, they have every right to a vote in UK elections just as British people are allowed to vote in Irish elections. This proposal shows typical Tory ignorance of issues relating to Northern Ireland; if Irish people in Northern Ireland were to be stripped of their vote simply for exercising their right to take up Irish citizenship then you would have the ludicrous situation of hundreds of thousands of nationalists being
disenfranchised and unionist majorities being entrenched in nearly every constituency. Rather than floating this half-baked idea Iain Dale would bebetter off joining me in campaigning to get representation for Irish emigrants in the Oireachtas."

(1) see: http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2007/04/irish-should-not-be-able-to-vote-in-uk.html#links