Does allowing Commonwealth citizens to vote in UK elections have any practical impact on those elections?

Question

Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK are generally allowed to vote in UK elections, even if they aren't British citizens. There's been some controversy over this provision. For example, Migration Watch UK calls for an end to the practice, saying that there's around 1 million Commonwealth citizens eligible to vote in the UK, and some recent UK elections were decided by less than a million votes. Thus "Commonwealth citizens voting can potentially have a significant impact on UK elections".

But is there any actual impact on UK elections? For example, have election candidates appealed to non-British voters, particularly in areas where Commonwealth citizens are highly concentrated?

Answer 1

It has certainly been controversial enough in the past for politicians to claim it has had an impact - though they may have had other motivations (e.g. to remind racist voters than non-white voters back other parties).

Pakistan left the Commonwealth in 1972 (rejoining in the late 1980s). At various times politicians - notably Cyril Smith, the Liberal and then Liberal Democrat MP for Rochdale (which has a high Pakistani-heritage population) and something of a populist - drew attention to the fact that Pakistani citizens could not rely on that status alone to vote in UK elections, often making the point that Labour politicians would be lax in enforcing this.