Douglas Carswell's Blog

Votes for prisoners?

This Thursday, MPs will debate whether prisoners should be allowed the right to vote.

How will I vote when the time comes?

There are people I respect on either side of the debate. On one hand, there are those who say the right to vote is fundamental.  Indeed, look at Switzerland, whose ideal of democracy I so admire. They allow prisoners to vote. 

On the other side are those who argue that prisoners have – through their own behaviour - lost their right to liberty - and should by extension forfeit the right to take part in the democratic process.

For me, however, there is an even more compelling reason why I will be voting against giving prisoners the right to vote; here sits an opportunity to begin to free ourselves from the illegitimate jurisdiction of a foreign court.

We are only being asked to vote on this issue because the Strasbourg Court has taken it upon itself to preside over the nooks and crannies of our lives. There is something profoundly anti-democratic in having an unelected foreign court try to define the shape of our democracy.

For a generation or more, judicial supremacists have pushed the idea that judges – rather than those we elect – should be the final arbiters of public policy. Yet who sanctioned the doctrine of judicial review? Who approved the idea that a court in Strasbourg should oversee our legislature, or that judges should appoint judges to a sit in judgement on our democratic choices?

Thursday’s vote is the first step towards liberating ourselves from the tyranny of a European court – and to start to unravel the creed of judicial supremacy at home.

For all the talk of a free vote, the Coalition remains in favour of giving prisoners the right to vote at the behest of the Strasbourg court.  My only regret is that the government does not dare try to do so with a three line whip on Thursday....

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