My plan for Regional Government

[minionofmidas]

Are these multi-member constituencies? Run off or list?

Single seat constituencies

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Not really; Labour sometimes loses councils in the Northeast that are normally safely Labour due to local scandals and stuff (or an overhyped "scandal" over schools policy in the case of Newcastle) like Durham (City) or Wear Valley of all places (back in 1990. The new LibDem administration was even worse than the Labour one turfed out in 1990, and in '95 the LibDem group was very close to getting wiped out).

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Yes, but there are areas of non-Labour support in a lot of the 28 Labour constituencies, they just get outvoted by working class areas in General Elections (Gosforth is outvoted by Newburn/Lemington, Whitley Bay et al by North Shields and so on) and this wouldn't be the case in a system with roughly double the number of seats.
A case could be made for an element of PR, but the point of this is that it would be possible to make it happen; PR is currently politically unacceptable to the people who could pull out a yes vote for devolution.

...and Afleitch has described why.

[minionofmidas]

Might I add that this is very interesting, keep up the good work etc etc. Shame I didn#t really notice this thread til now.

[minionofmidas]

Might I add that this is very interesting, keep up the good work etc etc. Shame I didn#t really notice this thread til now.

Thanks
Any suggestions for inner Newcastle? The rewarding made a complete mess of it... even the city planning districts still use the old wards...

Gimme pop. totals for the wards...and maybe a street layout map so I can't totally f up...

[minionofmidas]

Ware info (inc population) is here).

Wards to use:

Benwell & Scotswood, Fenham, Elswick, Westgate, Ouseburn, Byker, Walker, Walkergate, South Heaton, Winsgrove.

I'm fairly happy with the other seats; not perfect but similer to what the boundary commision would doodle.

I'll see what I can do...

[minionofmidas]

On the basis of just these three constituencies, obviously nothing much can be done. (Well, you could switch Elswick and Wingrove around, but I don't see what for.)
However, lemme guess at what your problem is...Fenham in the west is a middleclassish area (34% Council or Housing Authority, which is low for Inner Newcastle; Labour-held in council only due to divided opposition) paired with very very working class areas.
The same is true for Walkergate in the east (30% Council or HA; LD held.)
(Why did the LD's do so well in Ouseburn, btw?)
Since they'd probably be outpolled by their neighbors, you as a Labour man shouldn't be worried.
If you want to do something about it, though, you'd have to breakup the whole thing, especially the oversized Western districts, and create only two riverside districts, sans Fenham, Walkergate, and South Heaton.

[minionofmidas]

If you want to do something about it, though, you'd have to breakup the whole thing, especially the oversized Western districts, and create only two riverside districts, sans Fenham, Walkergate, and South Heaton.

Ah well. Thanks for trying

It might actually work out better.