France has made various foreign dependencies full-on departments of metropolitan France. Why doesn’t the UK do the same with e.g. the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and so forth, or at least offer the residents the possibility of agreeing to such a change in a referendum?
I suppose the question is, what is the advantage to the UK and to the residents of the Territories at large? In the case of the Falklands and Gibraltar I suspect opposition from both Argentina and Spain to the presence of British possessions off their shore would become more awkward if those possessions were not in some weird Constitutional relationship with the UK, as a holdover from the Empire, and instead were physically part of the UK. Further, the residents would obtain full rights to vote at Westminster which manages their external affairs.
Disadvantages: well, Britain can’t grant them independence at a whim should they become too costly to keep. Though, in the case of the Falklands, the political situation in the UK after the Falklands War, and the discovery of oil, means this is incredibly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
I think there’s also the geographic problem of their sheer distance. It would be a nightmare for the MP for the Falklands to traipse back and forth between Westminster and his constituency on a regular basis. Currently MPs try to do this weekly; even if the Member for Falklands was only doing it monthly it would be exhausting, inefficient and expensive.
Also, the Dependent Territories enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy with their local legislatures, and their primary association with Britain is joint citizenship, overlap of certain Acts of Parliament, and reliance on the British Armed Forces for defence. Giving them an MP would actually constitute a backwards step, as they would be more centralised.
Metropolitan France means the part of the country that is physically located in Europe. The overseas departments are integral parts of France, equal to metropolitan departments, represented in the French and European Parliaments, but are still not metropolitan France.
To the concept of the OP–it’s not my country, but I like the principle of the idea. All in and equal, or go your own way. I would like to see the United States territories admitted as (or incorporated into) states, or else divested.
It actually makes more sense for the US overseas territories to become states since US states have much more autonomy than a UK constituency.
As other have noted the current arrangement is essentially one of convenience. The overseas territories get many of the benefits of being part of the UK while retaining more independence from central government than any part of the mainland. In return we get to pretend that we still have an Empire and have some convenient tax havens for our morally bankrupt ruling class to stash their ill gotten gains.
Mass immigration by whom? Even if every single person in the British Overseas Territories immigrated to Great Britain, they would amount to barely a quarter of a million people.
But it would be even worse than that, as the population of the Falklands is tiny compared to any UK constituency, so it would have to be combined with other overseas territories.
Not only does Westminster manage their external affairs without territorial participation, it will take over their internal affairs too, if it likes, as in the Turks and Caicos in 2009.
On the questions of distance and population–the Falklands and some other bits would be problematic, but it looks to me like it would be easy enough to form three constituencies out of Bermuda and the Caribbean islands.
Apart from Pitcairn and Falklands, I would think the residents would be against it (and tbh in Pitcairn they enjoy their child rape and in the Falklands they are looking forward to piles of cash from oil, so I am not so sure the residents would be in favour there either). Why lose the opportunity to be a tax haven? Most of these places have far more companies than they have people!
Lot of hassle for limited reason. If you were going to do this you would start with the Channel Isles and the Isle of Man anyway (at least these actually have substantial inhaibtants), and I guarantee the locals would not be on board.
P.S. Even if everyone else was on board, the BIOT is promised to, iirc, the Seychelles if/when we leave it and that would be looking for a diplomatic inicident.
Hong Kongers perhaps would like to be a British dependency again, let alone independence. Such dependent territories are too weak to defend and sustain their own selves.
Hong Kong where people demand real autonomy and real referendum, faced several times of threats of cutting water supply. Mind that there are seven million people (mostly Chinese descendants!). More than Twice the population of Scotland.
We Hong Kong are having what I would describe as compulsory immigration from China, a really big problem. If UK is too keep all the dependencies well-administered and rights to migrate freely into the UK it is good.
God knows what will happen next year when the Bulgarians and Romanians arrive en masse.
Didn’t have the housing stock 10 years ago - before mass immigration really started - certainly don’t have it now, and there’s absolutely no chance before the next wave either.
Cost to social services - inc. the NHS - incalculable. Totally bolloxed.
What does this have to do with the topic? British Overseas Territories citizens became British citizens in 2002. They’re already allowed to move to the UK.
Changing the relationship with the home country is occasionally discussed but has proved unpopular with the BOT citizens in Cayman for various reasons.
Immigration in the reverse of what has be considered above is one of the great concerns. Cayman has immigration control and that includes the ability to deny a work visa to a UK citizen. There is a concern that unrestricted inward immigration from UK and/or EU citizens could put a strain on the economy, infrastructure, and social services.
Since much of the tax burden is borne through fees ultimately levied on external payers (tourists and financial services customers) there is a fear that full incorporation in to the UK would significantly raise the tax burden on Caymanians.
FWIW, Cayman as a BOT does not pay taxes to the UK. Maybe the UK did learn a thing or two from the US Revolution.
ZOMG!?! I Can’t believe it!!! They learned nothing!!! - oh, no, wait, how did Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, et al. all transition peacefully into independence? Maybe something was learned, hmmm.
The Falklands has a total population of three thousand people, if that, all of whom like things the way they are, as was proven two days ago. The population doesn’t merit having its own MP and it couldn’t really be a self-sustaining nation-state, as they are fully aware.
Then it wouldn’t be an empire.
This isn’t how the UK works, anyway. The United Kingdom proper is a union of specific countries, but they’re at least all in one place. Pretending that, say, India was part of the UK itself would effectively have made India the UK, since there are more people in India. Making Canada the UK would have made British politics insanely more complicated, since you now have a country with half as many people and twice as many arguments making up a huge chunk of the population.
The UK is, fundamentally, Britain. Had the Empire been all made the UK, then Britain would be a colony of the Empire; the UK is a tiny part of the totality of what was once the British Empire.
Immigration has been mentioned. How easy is it to move between the UK and the various British Overseas Territories? Are there different citizenships and passports and it’s basically like going to a foreign country?
The US overseas possessions (“unincorporated territories”) are a mixed bag. Puerto Rico has been fully integrated into the US customs and immigration zone. Puerto Ricans (who are US Citizens) can come to the mainland with no immigration paperwork and any non-Puerto Rican US Citizen can hop on a flight into San Juan and become a local by actually living there - no government permission needed to live or work and they can’t be deported as a foreigner, even if they get lost in Old San Juan too much. Non-citizens who want to go to PR have to go through the same process that they would have to go through to go to Chicago. Guam and the CNMI apparently have looser immigration restrictions and any US Citizen can go there and even live but everyone has to pass immigration to come back to make sure that nobody legally enters Saipan but then goes on to Seattle without the right visa. American Samoa apparently has rules for everyone, even US citizens.