UK parliamentary boundary review 2016-2018

[IceAgeComing]

So unsurprisingly, its as bad as the last review then?

It'll be interesting to see what they do up here - the Scottish Boundary Commission has a very different attitude on ward splitting than the England and Wales one though, which I think will lead to a better map.  There certainly wasn't anything totally awful in the last one; other than the fact that the highland seats now have to a much bigger than they were which isn't particularly great for rural representation; especially since the effective Scottish quota is higher due to Orkney and Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar...

[IceAgeComing]

The reasons for the year delay in the publication of the last boundary reviews in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland was hurriedly finished before the 2005 election to fill a Labour manifesto commitment to reduce the number of Scottish MPs to make them equal with England post-devolution so a special case) were a little complex: the English and Welsh reviews were finished in late 2004 so realistically couldn't be published immediately since the government planned a 2005 election and so forwarding them to parliament before it was dissolved would be incredibly silly since it'd be binned as soon as parliament was dissolved and hurriedly passing a boundary review and then immediately calling an election would cause a massive procedural mess; both in the political parties and also in the Electoral Commission and Local Authorities when it comes to procedural stuff.  After the election you had a very short term before the summer recess, then Conference season and by then you are in November so December isn't actually that late.  Also Northern Ireland were very late in finishing their work in the last review (not until 2008) and generally there is a precedent that the reports of all four Commissions should be considered at once and so publishing the thing many years before you need to act on it may not be necessary.

This time all four Commissions have finished on the same day and there's no election upcoming so publishing the reports quickly would make sense - there's no timescale on how quick a vote has to be after all.  The expectations I've seen as that they might publish them next week, although that's not certain.  Not definite that the reports even get through Parliament: all of the opposition bar the DUP are united in opposition; and even with the DUP (who are by no means guaranteed; depends on the final Northern Irish boundaries and what they can get for their votes) a small Tory rebellion by dissatisfied MPs who're having their seats abolished (going from 650 to 600; that's a lot more than usual) or made into marginal or safe Labour seats would defeat the review.  If that happened then surely there'd need to be some sort of compromise on the review rules towards a set that everyone generally can agree with: both reviews on the new rules would have been defeated in Parliament and the last review would have taken place in the mid 2000s on twenty year old electorates, so some kind of boundary changes are really needed.  The government were hostile towards changes proposed by backbench MPs earlier in the year; although I think that if the review goes down then they might have to reconsider that.

[IceAgeComing]

The Boundary Commission for England has put their final recommendations on their website: from a quick glance unsurprisingly it seems that there are no major changes from their revised recommendations: a few wards switching hands here and there; and a few seats renamed.  There might be bigger changes in certain areas but I haven't seen any yet.

Nothing yet from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; I expect to see them up today as well.