With opinion polls predicting an oncoming electoral shellacking for the Conservatives, it is unsurprising that Rishi Sunak is hoping to find extra voters wherever he can. CCHQ’s latest bet is in the two million or so Britons living overseas who have just had their lifetime voting rights restored.

On 16 January, rules came into operation allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in general elections. Labour introduced a 15-year limit on voting rights for expats in 2001. Repealing that limit has been a long-standing Tory manifesto commitment. Doing so with last year’s Elections Act has more than doubled the number of eligible overseas voters from 1.4 million to 3.5 million.

CCHQ has reportedly told Conservative associations to identify a cohort of potential proxies to act on behalf of overseas voters

This represents the biggest expansion of the franchise since the rights of male and female voters were equalised in 1928. Michael Gove was keen to couch the decision in highly principled terms, suggesting the decision has ‘once again shown’ that the Conservatives are ‘the party of democracy’.

Unsurprisingly, some are unhappy that the Tories have added, with little fanfare, millions of potential voters who aren’t even British residents. Paul Scriven, a Lib Dem peer, has asked how it can be right that someone who has not lived in the UK for 50 years can have a say over policies that do not affect them. What can expats know of the state of the NHS from sunning themselves at their Spanish villa?

One might suggest the Lord doth protest too much. An obvious reason why the Liberal Democrats have long opposed extending overseas voting – and why the Conservatives have been so keen on it – is the expectation that expats will vote Tory. Reducing immigration or cutting taxes is too much like hard work. Enfranchising a legion of Essex Men from the Costa del Sol seems a simpler path to re-election.

There is something to this stereotype. Studies of the 1992 general election showed almost 80 per cent of registrations were in Conservative constituencies, with almost two-thirds of the expat vote going to John Major’s Tories. British expats cast their vote in the last UK constituency they resided in. Sunak hopes that they will provide enough extra votes to swing a few tight contests towards the Conservatives.

This is why CCHQ has reportedly told Conservative associations to identify a cohort of potential proxies to act on behalf of overseas voters. Rule changes mean voters can now vote on behalf of up to four others, although two of these can be UK residents. Overseas voting is a standard practice in the USA, France, and Italy. The Tories clearly hope to lead the way with this newly empowered voter group.

But research suggests that enacting ‘votes for life’ might be a Conservative own goal. Expats might once have been a reliably Tory block. But Brexit has pushed them into the opposition’s arms. A University of Sussex survey revealed the Conservatives’ share of EU overseas voters fell by two-thirds between 2015 and 2019. The Labour and Lib Dem share rose from 56 per cent to 85 per cent.

95 per cent of EU-based expats voted Remain. They did not enjoy their residency rights being contested during Brexit negotiations. CCHQ should have been alarmed at how supportive the pro-EU campaigners British in Europe are of ‘votes for life’. London and the South-East saw the most overseas voters in 2019. The Lib Dems are organising to deploy expat voters across the so-called ‘Blue Wall’.

Of course, EU-based British expats are far from a majority. They accounted for only 26 per cent in 2017. A third were in Australia or New Zealand and 28 per cent in the US and Canada. CCHQ has previously had help from Australia’s Liberals in reaching the 1.2 million expats Down Under. Sunak will be hoping Anglosphere residents will be more receptive to Brexit than their continental counterparts.

Even this, then, relies on those expats newly enfranchised to actually bother to register to vote. Following the new rules coming into force, 22,937 overseas Britons have registered, compared to 1,141 in the same period last year. Then again, in 2017 and 2019, fewer than a quarter of those eligible chose to register. Even that was an increase from the paltry 35,000 who had done so before 2015.

As such, even with their swollen numbers, expats might play a much smaller part in this year’s election than might be expected. But that should not be a cause for Conservatives complacency. All parties seek to rewrite the rules of the electoral game in their favour. The Liberal Democrats have always been keen on proportional representation; Labour now wants to lower the voting age to 16. Doing so would enfranchise another 1.5 million or so voters who hate the Tories.

Even in 1997 the Conservatives got 27 per cent of the 18 to 24-year-old vote. They are now polling at 8 per cent and under. Handing the vote to a couple of million expats does nothing to avert that looming demographic disaster. Perhaps Sunak should be raising the voting age instead – or building some more houses.