About BOVF
Vision, Mission and Paradigm
What we are trying to bring about, what we do about it, and the change of assumption that everything else depends on.
Vision
Citizenship that does not thin out with distance
A United Kingdom in which being a British citizen means the same thing in Bangkok, Milan or Nairobi as it does in Birmingham: a vote that can actually be cast and counted, a pension that behaves the same way wherever it is paid, a family that can come home, and a government able to find and talk to its own citizens.
Mission
Turn eligible citizens into registered voters, and their problems into workable policy
Two tracks, deliberately. We close the registration gap — ~3.4 million eligible against ~191,000 registered — because that is the only leverage we have and it is entirely within our own gift. And we develop remedies that a UK minister could defend in public, so that when the leverage arrives there is something ready for it to act on.
Paradigm
From petitioners to constituents
The old assumption was that Britons abroad were people who had left, asking favours of a country they no longer contributed to. The change we are working towards is that they are electors — permanent, numerous and organised — whose concerns are ordinary constituency business rather than special pleading.
What the paradigm shift changes in practice
- FromA pensioner writes to complain that their pension is frozen.
- ToA constituent with a vote raises an issue affecting 450,000 other electors.
- FromA campaign asks the government to be fairer to people abroad.
- ToA benchmarked proposal shows a minister how twenty other countries already do it.
- FromOverseas voters are a rounding error spread across 650 seats.
- ToOverseas voters are an identifiable, organised and growing bloc.
- FromNobody in government knows how many Britons live abroad or how to reach them.
- ToRegistration is maintained through a service citizens already use.
One qualification we hold to