Editorial Note: The TCJ Forum, at which Andrew Rosindell MP and Franz Manderson CBE spoke in August 2026, was a public forum funded and hosted by The Caymanian Journal.

Andrew Rosindell MP has told TCJ that elected Westminster seats for the Overseas Territories are "a position I have championed personally for many years", and that he does not accept the Cayman Islands Government's recorded view that a Cayman seat would leave the territory "a severe minority" whose voice "could be drowned out".

The Reform UK MP for Romford, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories, told a Gibraltar reception at his party's conference in Birmingham on 5 September that he wanted a Gibraltar MP in the UK Parliament, Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) News reported the same day. The Olive Press reported on 8 September that he also promised to extend Westminster seats to the British Overseas Territories.

The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and would fall within that proposal. Mr Rosindell had already made the case for Cayman at the TCJ Forum at Stingray Media Studios on Wednesday 26 August, where he told the session "Cayman: Who Are We Accountable To?" that the UK makes decisions on foreign affairs, defence and constitutional matters that directly affect the territory while Caymanians elect nobody to the Parliament that makes them. "What I find wrong is that there can never be a Caymanian voice in the Parliament that makes these decisions," he said, calling the position a "democratic deficit".

Any change to who sits in the House of Commons would require legislation at Westminster, and Reform UK is not in government. TCJ emailed the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on 10 September asking whether the UK Government has a position on elected Westminster representation for the Overseas Territories, and for its response to Mr Rosindell's view that the territories should not sit within the Foreign Office. It had not responded by the time of publication.

What Cayman has said before

The proposal runs against the position the Cayman Islands Government has put on the record twice. In written evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee's inquiry into the future of the Overseas Territories, dated October 2018, the Government wrote: "We recognise we have no political representation in Westminster, nor is any desired, but that does not mean our Ministers or senior civil servants should be treated with any less respect." Five years later, then Premier Juliana O'Connor-Connolly MP was asked about territory MPs on Radio Cayman's For the Record programme on 1 December 2023 and said: "For me, personally, I think it would be a retrograde step." Cayman, she said, would be "entering there as a severe minority, and the voice could be drowned out". Ms O'Connor-Connolly, who was returned for Cayman Brac East in the April 2025 general election, did not respond to an email from TCJ on 10 September asking whether that remains her view.

The House of Commons Library, in a briefing on representing the territories in Parliament first published in August 2024 and updated in July 2026, records the same objections in general terms: that even the largest territory is smaller than the average UK constituency, that a shared seat risks "dominance by larger Caribbean OTs", and that representation might "undermine Territory autonomy".

TCJ put the 2018 evidence, Ms O'Connor-Connolly's 2023 remarks and the Library's three objections to Mr Rosindell by email on 18 September, together with two further questions on where the policy stands. He replied on 19 September.

His answers

"I respect the fact that politicians in some Territories may hold different views, and any constitutional change should involve the people of each Territory themselves," Mr Rosindell wrote. "However, I do not accept that representation is somehow meaningless because an MP would be one voice amongst many. No constituency is a majority in the House of Commons - not Romford, Windsor, Edinburgh, Orkney and Shetland or the Isle of Wight. That has never been the purpose of parliamentary representation."

A Cayman Islander in the Commons "would have a very powerful voice", he said, and "would send a very strong signal that the Cayman Islands and Caymanians are equal members of the British family". On autonomy, he wrote: "The Overseas Territories would continue to exercise self-government over their domestic affairs, just as they do now. Westminster representation would complement that settlement by providing democratic accountability in those areas where HM Government retains responsibility, particularly defence and foreign affairs."

On constituency size, he said Westminster "already recognises that geography and historic identity sometimes justify constituencies that differ significantly in population", citing the Isle of Wight and Orkney and Shetland. "The Cayman Islands would have enough electors to be granted its own individual M.P. and it would be a proud moment when 'The Hon. Member for the Cayman Islands' was called to speak in the House of Commons. I look forward to that day." The smallest territories, he said, could share representation with "another British constituency that has an established constitutional or historical connection", giving Pitcairn as an example of a territory that "would not realistically require its own Member of Parliament".

Asked whether the proposal is Reform UK policy or his own, he described it as a position he has championed personally and one that "deserves serious consideration". He did not say that it had been adopted by the party.

The parallel Mr Rosindell drew

At the Forum, moderator Crystal Gomez Wilson asked Mr Rosindell to whom Westminster was politically accountable when it made decisions affecting Cayman, given that Caymanians do not elect an MP. He said he would support exploring elected representation for the territories only with a "cast iron 100% guarantee" that it would not diminish their existing powers of self-government, and pointed to Greenland and the Faroe Islands within the Kingdom of Denmark as a model worth examining. Representation at the centre, he said, need not require incorporation into the metropolitan state or the surrender of local self-government. The Danish Parliament, the Folketing, has 179 members, of whom two are elected in Greenland and two in the Faroe Islands.

In Birmingham, according to The Olive Press, he made the same argument for Gibraltar, citing Denmark, the Netherlands and France as states whose territories elect members to the national legislature, and said the change would not affect Gibraltar's powers of self-government. He said he hoped Nigel Feetham, Gibraltar's Minister for Justice, Trade and Industry, would one day sit in the House of Commons as Gibraltar's first MP, and that a Reform government would be "the most pro-Gibraltar government that has ever existed". In his answers to TCJ he returned to the comparison: "The French don't, the Dutch don't, and the Danish don't," he wrote of excluding territories from the national legislature, calling the Danish arrangement "a suitable example for Britain to follow".

Mr Rosindell told the Forum that the relationship should also be handled differently in Whitehall. "Overseas territories are not foreign, they're British," he said, arguing that responsibility should move from the Foreign Office to a department such as the Cabinet Office. In Birmingham, as reported by The Olive Press, he proposed renaming the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Asked by TCJ how the two positions fit together, he said both were "constitutional views I have held consistently for many years". Responsibility for the territories, and for the Crown Dependencies, "would sit more naturally within a constitutional department such as the Cabinet Office rather than the Foreign Office", he wrote, while Britain's foreign ministry "should be focused on conducting our relations with foreign countries and advancing the national interest abroad", with development policy supporting that objective rather than holding "an equal status as foreign diplomacy".

He coupled the representation argument with a warning against Westminster interference. "I don't want MPs in Westminster start telling you you can't do this or you can do that because you do things very well without that interference," he told the Forum, describing the present arrangement as "the best of both worlds" and saying Cayman "could easily be an independent nation, very easily" but that he saw no broad desire for that course.

Where Mr Manderson said accountability now sits

Retired Deputy Governor Franz Manderson CBE, who appeared with Mr Rosindell, told the Forum that Cayman's government is "first and foremost accountable to the electorate and the people that they serve" but that there is also constitutional accountability to the UK. "We are not sovereign," he said, adding that this placed a responsibility on Cayman to govern itself in a way that gave Britain no reason to exercise its retained authority.

Mr Manderson raised a second route to Cayman having a place in the UK system, at the other end of the constitutional relationship. Having worked under five governors and served as acting governor for about five months, he asked why deputy governors from the Overseas Territories should not be able to compete for governorships on merit. "Not to be appointed, but to compete," he said. "Why could they not compete to become governor, not necessarily of their own territory, but perhaps of another territory? I think that conversation will need to be had at some point." Mr Rosindell said he favoured each territory's elected government having "a major input and a say about who their governor is", but that the office must keep enough independence to act when things go wrong: "The last thing you want is for the premier to appoint his best mate as governor."

Whether any territory gains an elected member is a matter for the UK Parliament. Whether the Cayman Islands Government would seek such representation is a matter for the Premier and Cabinet, and its last two stated positions, in 2018 and 2023, were that it would not. Asked by TCJ whether those positions still hold and for its view on the two proposals aired at the Forum, the Office of the Premier did not answer directly. In a reply on 11 September it said the Foreign Affairs Committee and the House of Lords Constitution Committee "from time to time send questions to all OTs" and that the Government had "provided written responses via our London Office on both occasions as initial feedback". The issues raised, it said, "are related to constitutional arrangements between the UK and OTs which was a key topic at the Caribbean OT Leaders Caucus", held in Hamilton, Bermuda, from 8 to 10 September and attended by Premier André Ebanks MP. "As we continue to develop a more modern constitutional relationship with the UK, the questions you've asked will be reported on in due course as matters develop," it said.