So, a whole swathe of seats are probably going to disappear (probably 50). The majority of them will effect labour seats.Will labour ever get a majority again?
Things that occurred to me were:
Seats reducing while population is increasing
Seat sizes are based on registered voters rather than those eligible to vote. In some seats, this could mean that were a whole load of people, currently not registered, decide to suddenly become politically active (in some seats apparently as many as 20% of the eligible voters) we would end up with unevenly represented seats again.
This seems to be faffing around at the edges. The whole system is a crock of shit. Really, some kind of proportional system makes much more sense to me.
Which Labour MP will fall on their sword to make way for Corbyn?
More here:
and here:
Views? Opinions? Does anyone really care? Is Labour unelectable anyway?
Most incumbent governments mess with the boundaries, to what they think is their own advantage. The new element of this is the reduction in the number of seats, which you’ve picked up on. That’s basically a Tory policy in the abstract. Less resource being allocated to more people; the Conservative maxim.
I think that this’ll actually do Corbyn’s Labour some good, even if he does have to go through the formality of getting another seat at the general election. It’s thought that he’ll go for Poplar, where the sitting MP is thought to be retiring in 2020.
The most interesting thing about those Labour seats though, is where they are. Mostly in urban areas, mostly in very safe Labour areas. These seats aren’t going to be easily turned blue with a bit of boundarying. They will come up for “natural” reselection though, meaning that the sitting MPs can be reselected without the attendant fuss and bile that would normally be required.
Most of those seats are full of plotter types, installed there by the Blairite faction with the intention of giving them a job for life, and solidifying that faction’s power in the House of Commons. Since the coup, I’ve not really seen a way for Labour to win as constituted, but I do think it can win if it rids itself of those with much narrower, factional interests. Therefore, any mechanism that could solve this problem needs to be seen as an opportunity, even if it comes with problems.
Reducing the number of MP by 10% - saving ÂŁ65m over 5 years - fair enough
Having roughly the same number of voters per constituency makes sense.
Am I surprised that there is a lot of disgruntlement from the Labour ranks? No, not only are they losing the most seats, they are potentially being forced into reselection battles that could only benefit the corbynites
To be fair, we are a very over-represented nation.
The reason labour MPs are unhappy is because it will disproportionately effect them. They’ll lose more seats than the tories in the shake up because they have fewer REGISTERED voters in their metropolitan consituencies. This doesn’t mean they necessarily have fewer people they represent, just that fewer of them are registered to vote.
Apparently, loads of people registered in order to vote in the referendum but this hasn’t been taken into account in electoral reform. the guy being interviewed today said they weren’t allowed, by law, to consider recent registrations.
The whole thing is now open for public consultation before a vote in parliament.
The IoW used to be two constituencies and they were too small. There was talk of having one constiuency on the IoW and another which was part IoW and Part South Hampshire. This was rejected as being unworkable.
To be fair, the IoW is an anomoly and, as the head of Ofsted said, full of in-bred paupers, so I’m not sure that’s a problem.
I think the system in itself is neccessary (not that I’m in favour of anything that gives the Conservatives any kind of advantage but I’m sure these changes in the past would have benefitted Labour when they were in power at some point in history), as you do need to adjust for the changes in population and demographics somehow. In terms of how and when these decisions are taken, from that BBC article it says that the Lib Dems put the kaibosh on it happening previously, maybe the independant commision should just change the boundaries as a matter of course, say every 20 years or 4 GE’s, whatever comes first, would taking the decision away from whoever is in power make it any fairer?
