Michael Meacher has me confused over individual electoral registration

Dear Michael Meacher,

I’m puzzled by your views on individual electoral registration. You call it “insidious”, “underhand”, “utterly anti-democratic” and “Tory”. Yet the legislation for it was introduced by a Labour government, Labour’s 2010 manifesto boasted about Labour’s achievement in passing that legislation and – as far as I can see – you didn’t rebel once over the legislation when it was going through Parliament.

Of course there are issues about whether or not electoral registration should be voluntary and whether the annual canvass should be kept in 2014, but those are not the target of your written ire. Your piece specifically instead refers to individual electoral registration.

You may not have seen my tweet last week asking you about how you reconcile this but by all means let me know via email instead and I’ll update my post on the matter accordingly.

I guess perhaps it is a sign of just how sneaky a Tory plot it is that the Tories got a Labour government to legislate for it and Labour MPs like yourself to vote for it…!

Yours etc.

UPDATE: In a reply to me subsequently, Michael Meacher has said that his comments are only about voluntary electoral registration. Fair enough, though to have written at such length without making such a basic distinction shows rather poor judgement.