By Benjamin Harris-Quinney - Conservatives Abroad (Madrid)

After spending the last 6 months in Madrid, Spain pushing the Conservative Agenda, I have to report that socialism in the sun is only marginally more fun. It still features crippling unemployment, heavy-handed government and poor public services.

Photo: Ben (centre) with Abusos Urbanisticos-No team

There is however some progress to report. Last week I travelled to Javea in the Valencia region to meet with Chuck Svoboda who runs Abusos Urbanisticos-No (AUN), an organisation formed by ex-pat property owners seeking to combat the baffling Valencian LUV Land-grab law that permits local government to take land from residents without compensation and sell it on to developers.

As unfathomable as this may seem in a capitalist western democracy, it has affected over 100,000 ex-pat Brits, who have, in many cases, lost their homes and livelihoods with no hope of compensation. It is when Chuck told me that AUN seeks to mount a legal challenge to the LUV law, and take their collective case to Brussels to have the Spanish law overturned in European Court, that the scale of how staggeringly the British Consul and the current government have failed to represent its expatriate citizens truly became apparent.

I am already quite aware that the British Embassy in Madrid seems to be little more than the clubhouse from which civil servants launch their various golfing trips and beach holidays. When I telephoned the embassy in late September 08, I was told that the Ambassador Denise Holt was still on summer holidays. I wondered at the time if their was any point in her coming back before she began her Christmas excursions. From the evidence of her abilities to represent the 1 million Brits in Spain, there wasn’t. The British Embassy in Spain refuses to register ex-pat nationals who have moved here, claiming it unnecessary. They are unable, therefore, to provide any data on voter registration, thus most Brits abroad have no idea when they need to register for the upcoming European elections or how to do so. Beyond this, I am told that the Embassy does not wish to challenge the Spanish government regarding the LUV law, because they fear rocking the boat. One wonders, then, how they justify the multi-million Euro property in central Madrid as being an effective use of tax-payers’ money if they are merely there to watch the world go by.

Great Britain has always been a nation of exploratory peoples, at home on foreign soil, yet always clearly representative of where home was. We live, work, study and retire all over the world, but we still retain, and should expect, as much representation and support from Westminster as those who live in the UK. Yet, in Spain just 1% of the 1 million British people here vote in UK elections, and this is not because they have left the UK long behind and are toasting Cava to the good life. Often they are struggling to run businesses that cater to British tourists, or are living on a pension on which they still have to pay tax in the UK.

Photo: Ben with members from the Javea Conservatives Abroad branch

Whilst in Javea, I also had the pleasure of having lunch with David and Jennie Decker who together have helped run the oldest Conservatives Abroad branch in Spain. David is a retired RAF serviceman who draws an armed services pension from the UK. He is less than happy to see his money paying for the current government’s scorched earth economic policies, and clearly is dramatically affected by the Sterling’s 30% drop in value, as indeed am I. The current system of voting from abroad is that those with the personal conviction to go through the long process of getting yourself registered only have two viable options: to appoint a proxy voter or to vote in person in the UK. The postal voting system is such a fudge of mismanaged bureaucracy, that more often than not your vote is left uncounted. Of more concern is that under the Labour government the law was changed to limit Brits abroad from voting if they have lived overseas for more than 15 years. David is therefore in immediate danger of losing his vote- one that I feel, considering his service to our armed forces, is more deserved than many residents of the UK.

Clearly, as a party we could be doing a lot more to represent and support ex-pat British citizens in Spain and the World. We should be campaigning to get the voting laws changed, we should appoint a Lord or MP to represent the 1 million Brits in Spain and we should be challenging foreign governments openly when abusive laws such as the LUV are evident. Many of us feel that the EU is a staggering waste of money and, more worryingly, a serious threat to our future as a sovereign nation. We cannot continue to argue this position and yet force many of our most loyal Conservative voters into the sticky mire of Brussels in search of justice and political representation.

Next month, with the backing of CCHQ, I will found the first Conservatives Abroad branch in Madrid, and we have already negotiated an alliance with James Levy, Head of Republicans Abroad Spain. Thanks to the assistance of Chuck Svoboda and the Deckers, our voter registration forms will be sent out to the 100,000+ members on the AUN mailing list all over Spain in time for the April 30th European elections deadline. We have also arranged for a continued and open dialogue with FAES, former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznars’ think-tank, who hope to publish David Cameron’s book Cameron on Cameron for a Spanish audience. Suzanne Wyatt, an AUN affiliate, will be presenting a petition to Downing Street regarding the LUV issue: www.spanishpropertyscandalpetition.co.uk, and is also seeking support from CCHQ, which we should give her. Progress has been made in the time I have been here, but the big push needs to be for the UK general election.

In the future the Conservative Party cannot forget, as Labour has, that Great Britain is a nation whose people like to travel, explore and indeed conquer the world; they shouldn’t have to leave their vote at home.

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