Is New Labour guilty of an electoral crime?

As we all now know, according to a Andrew Nether, a long term NuLabour adviser and one time speech writer for Tony Blaire, Jack Straw and David Blunkett, the mass immigration which we have seen in the country in the last ten to twelve years, was not the result of inefficiency or cock up but a deliberate, albeit secret, government policy, which the kept from their core voters.

According to Mr Nether, this policy was primarily intended to make the country more Multicultural, which is in itself a political aim. However, he also states that the policy was designed to disadvantage the right wing opposition. The headline statement, picked up by most people, including myself, was that the government wanted to “rub the right’s nose in diversity”, but he goes on to say that the intent was to “render their (the Right’s) arguments out of date”.

That is to say that the policy was a deliberate attempt to place the right wing opposition at a disadvantage, and, as such be inevitably to the advantage of the government.

I am not a lawyer, but I believe there is a term for this, and that term is “gerrymandering”.

It is my understanding that the act of gerrymandering is to deliberately change the make up of a constituency for the purpose of electoral benefit. This is, most commonly, achieved by artificially amending the boundaries of a constituency. However, it can also, as in the case of Westminster council in the 1980’s be the act of deliberately changing the demographic make up of a constituency for the purpose of political gain.

As the United Kingdom is the current governments constituency, and it they deliberately attempted to change the demographic of that constituency for political purposes, such as to place the political opposition at a disadvantage, by, for instance, rendering their arguments out of date, is this not doing the same thing?.

The other thing to note about gerrymandering is that it is illegal, as Dame Shirley Porter, the ex-head of Westminster council, discovered when she was fined over £43 million, including interest, following the “Building stable communities” policy, otherwise known as “Homes for votes” which her party had introduced in 1986.

Lady Porter finally agreed to pay a reduced settlement of £12.3 million, and now lives in self imposed exile in Israel, however, her fate shows that politicians are not immune from prosecution when it comes to such acts.

Once again, as I say, I have no relevant legal qualifications, but if the governments secret policy was indeed gerrymandering, and therefore illegal, what effect does this have on what might be termed the “progeny” of this illegal act?.

Vast numbers of citizenships have been granted and asylum applications approved since the government embarked on this policy, were these a direct result of this policy, or indeed part of the same policy? Any number of funding decisions and planning applications, such as for the building of mosques, have been approved in the wake of this policy. If the policy is not legal, are they?.

I repeat I am not a lawyer, and I may be whistling in the wind, but maybe someone who is a lawyer may wish to comment on these questions?