A person places a political campaign sign for the Liberal Democrats party in London, on April 28.Toby Melville/Reuters
Ying Perrett never saw herself as particularly political. She believed in democracy, but did not play an active role in the protests that roiled her native Hong Kong in 2019. But when the authorities began cracking down the following year, she felt alarm, particularly when she learned of new requirements for schools to teach kids about national security and being patriotic to China.
In 2021, Ms. Perrett joined an exodus of Hong Kongers moving to Britain. She was able to do so as a holder of a British National (Overseas), or BNO, passport. They were handed out to Hong Kong residents prior to the territory’s 1997 handover to China but did not confer the right of abode in the U.K., after a series of British laws controversially stripped Hong Kongers of full citizenship.
After Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, London introduced a new pathway to citizenship for BNO holders and their dependants; in 2022, it expanded the scheme to cover the adult children of BNO holders born after the 1997 handover.
About 180,000 Hong Kongers have moved to the U.K. under that program, according to research by Hong Kong Watch, a London-based advocacy group. On July 4, some 140,000 of those newcomers will be eligible to vote in the British general election, thanks to a law that also enfranchises Irish and Commonwealth citizens living in Britain, a nod to the country’s colonial past.
Ms. Perrett hopes these first-time voters will choose the Liberal Democrats, on whose ticket she was elected the first-ever BNO local councillor in 2023. Indeed, the Lib Dems, Britain’s perennial third party, who last sat in government as a junior coalition partner to the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015, are hoping Hong Kong voters could swing several seats for them on July 4.
Sarah Cheung Johnson, chair of the Chinese Liberal Democrats, a group within the centrist party, said the Lib Dems see Hong Kongers as a natural constituency, given that many BNO migrants tend to be highly educated, economically secure and politically moderate.
“A lot of Hong Kong BNO people that we speak to, they’re very passionate about wanting to get involved and embedded in their local community now that they’ve made that huge psychological decision to leave Hong Kong,” she told The Globe and Mail. “I think this is one area where the Lib Dems are appealing – because we are such a strong community-based political party.”
The party is also able to draw on a strong legacy of supporting Hong Kong. The late Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown long fought for BNO holders to be granted the right of abode in the U.K., and in the 2019 election the Lib Dems were the only party to include such a pledge in their manifesto.
This is what drew Ms. Perrett to the party when she decided to get involved in local politics in her new home in Surrey, southwest of London. Bilingual in English and Cantonese, she found herself helping many other migrants with tax and housing issues and eventually decided to run for election, choosing the Lib Dems because “this is one party that has really stood up for me in the past.”
In April, another Hong Konger, Andy Ng, was elected to Wokingham Borough Council, also as a Liberal Democrat. Speaking to the South China Morning Post, he said all Hong Kongers moving to the U.K. “should not just integrate in the country by going to work and schools, or paying taxes – we should also get engaged in politics.”
Both Surrey and Wokingham are in the southeast of England, a Lib Dem heartland, and Ms. Cheung Johnson said many Hong Kongers have moved to areas where the party is competitive – which means that if they are successful in winning a new constituency over, it could play a decisive role in several seats.
According to Hong Kong Watch, there are at least 10 seats – all currently held by the Conservatives – that could be decided by the Hong Kong vote, most in the south of England. Polling by YouGov shows the Conservatives on track to lose around 225 seats, most to Labour, which is expected to form the next government with a strong majority, but also to the Lib Dems, which could gain around 37 seats, making them comfortably the third-largest party in the new Parliament.
Most BNO holders do not express a strong party affiliation, and some Hong Kongers living in the U.K. have sought to highlight their potential value as swing voters. Last year, Ian Ng helped launch the Vote 4 HK campaign, with the stated aim of “maximizing the leverage of Hong Kongers” by mobilizing voters in marginal constituencies.
“Understandably, Hong Kong is not a top priority or even on the radar for most politicians in Westminster,” Mr. Ng said. “So one of our most important objectives is to keep Hong Kong on the agenda.”
This includes encouraging parliamentary candidates to sign a pledge to support the people of Hong Kong “in their pursuit of freedom and democracy,” settlement in the U.K. and exercise of their civic rights free from repression, something that has taken on new focus after the recent arrests of several alleged Chinese spies.
“We are in touch with the three main party headquarters and many parliamentary candidates in constituencies with a significant presence of Hong Kongers, and they are generally willing to sign,” Mr. Ng said.
The Lib Dems, however, have been the most active, courting candidates such as Ms. Perrett and Andy Ng and producing Cantonese videos and Chinese pamphlets targeting potential voters from Hong Kong.
Neither the Conservatives nor Labour would make anyone available to interview for this story, citing campaign schedules, and did not respond to a request for comment on their Hong Kong policy.
Since the general election was called, Ms. Perrett has been canvassing in Surrey Heath, where the Lib Dems are hoping to unseat Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove. Many of the people she meets are Hong Kongers, who she said are generally open to her message and keen to be engaged in the politics of their new home.
“Just last week someone said to me, ‘Oh, you’re the first party that knocked on my door,’ ” she said.