| Comment | A famous example was of course Bobby Sands - MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, while in prison in County Down.
And as that illustrates, the simple answer is that people are free to elect whoever they want to elect. The downside is that safe seats tend to get candidates parachuted in - for many years Scottish seats were home to mediocre Labour MPs with little to no connection to the area. However, if residency were required you could easily see 'token' residency being used to achieve the same end.
It goes further than that - you don't even have to live in the UK or even be a UK citizen to stand for election.
There, is, however, an expectation that an MP elected to represent a constituency does spend time there and run surgeries and be contactable/visible to the electorate. So they might not be resident beforehand, but an MP who didn't engage with their constituency at all would be in breach of their obligations. |
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