UK parliamentary boundary review

[vileplume]

Local knowledge, hunches, intuition and an awareness of the fact that whatever methods you use; none of them will be perfect.

The other issue with using pure ward numbers is that tactical voting is a big thing; and so you can't assume that a ward that moves from a safe seat to a marginal or vice versa; or from a Labour/Conservative to Lib Dem/Conservative marginal will behave anything like it did in the last election.

I think the best example is some of the proposed SW London seats. If you take away a Labour ward from Putney and add two wards from Richmond Park, suddenly it's a lot better for the Tories because Labour have such a low total in Richmond Park given the Lib Dem strength. But in a GE a big chunk of the new Lib Dem vote would coalesce around the Labour incumbent.

Richmond Park's probably not the best example for this as it's easily the most right-wing Lib Dem held constituency and consequently a rather large minority of the Lib Dem vote in this seat would prefer the Tories to Labour. If you're looking for a constituency where the Lib Dem vote would heavily prefer Labour, Bath would be a good bet.

A gerrymander that switched Roehampton for Barnes would, short of a Tory collapse, wreck Labour's chances of holding Putney especially if turnout among Corbyn friendly groups (young renters) falls under Starmer, which is a distinct possibility.

[vileplume]

Just having a quick decco at the areas I'm familiar with.

That N. Swansea/Loughor seat is a bit unusual.  It stretches between some fairly disparate areas.  The Gorseinon, Loughor, Gowerton area is more similar to the rest of Gower.  Would it be easier to try and recreate the old Gower seat but have The Mumbles in Seat 30?  Correct me if the numbers wouldn't work out.

Seat 25 is also slightly strange.  Could a seat anchored on Porthcawl be viable?  I get you're trying to follow county lines though but personally splitting Porth and Bridgend seems better.

I like what you've done in Cardiff, Caerphilly and Pontypridd.  The valleys look good too.  Would the Shadow Home Secretary be a little safer now in Torfaen?

Splitting Powys still makes sense.

The Aberystwyth-Fishguard seat is cool too.

No he'd become a little bit less safe, as making the Torfaen constituency coterminous with the borough of the same name (as is sensible) just adds the Cwmbran suburbs of Croesyceiliog and Llanyrafon. These are both a fair bit more Tory inclined than most of the rest of the borough (other than their traditional stronghold of New Inn).

[vileplume]

And their website has crashed.  There must be more of us boundary geeks than I thought.

From what I'm seeing these aren't good.  For gods sake a Chester North and South.

To be fair that area is not easy due to the Wirral having a spare third of a seat which basically forces a split of either Chester or Ellesmere Port. The only way to avoid this would be to cross from the Wirral into Liverpool which is a big no, no.

[vileplume]

I have the shapefile and will be uploading thoughts here.

MAP KEY:

Colors are 2019 (2021 Hartlepool) winners. New Lines are black, old red.

Cornwall:



Old Camborne and Redruth is gone. Its now a north coast seat with Truro and St. Ives absorbing the south

It's not gone at all. Camborne and Redruth keeps the vast majority of its old electorate, all they've done is shifted around a few rural areas. The changes look far bigger than they actually are.

[vileplume]

Somerset



Lots of churn. Taunton Deene is now just Taunton thanks to shrinkage.  New Birdgwater seat. Weston Super Mare has shrunk, might be held by Labour whenever they form the next government. bath and Bristol got a lot of work....



Jacob Rees-Mogg's constituency got cracked HARD, but I suspect he can win Frome. Bath Expands. Fifth new Bristol seat in the east of the city and includes New Cheltenham. +1 Lab. Filton & Bradley Stoke loses the coastal territory. May also be a Labour target in a competitive election.

No it didn't, it's Chris Skidmore's Kingswood that's got the chop. The monstrosity that is Keynsham & North East Somerset (which crosses into Gloucestershire...) is technically Rees-Mogg's seat. It's probably more Tory than his current seat too as the Bristol suburbs brought in are quite heavily Tory inclined whilst Midsomer Norton and environs still have a bit of a Labour vote (albeit diminished).

In any case if these boundaries come to pass Rees-Mogg may agree to stand in Frome to allow Skidmore to stand in Keynsham & North East Somerset. In either constituency he'll have no problems winning. However I doubt these boundaries will survive public consultation, crossing the Gloucestershire-Somerset boundary unnecessarily as well as giving Kingswood to axe for no good reason is prime pitchfork bait.

[vileplume]

I'm happy with my area.   I only just manage to stay in my current seat and as noted this seat might be a Labour target now.  I wonder who benefits most from Bath's changes?  Presumably the Tories?

I like the Bristol map and Filton & BS (is that your seat then?) but I'm not so convinced by the leftover bits of Kingswood being put in a seat called "Keynsham & North East Somerset".  It's slightly bizarre to see Bristol West lose three of its easternmost wards and get renamed Bristol Central, but TBH I think that's an acknowledgement that it should have been renamed in the last review.  (I guess it becomes a slightly more plausible Green target?)

Overall I think the South West is not bad, but I'd have tried to do it (indeed I did do it) with fewer county boundary crossings.

Yes I'm in FBS.  I agree that boundary crossing should be avoided but ultimately they have mostly kept similar communities together.

The problem in my view is that the communities with the best links to Bristol (Hanham, Filton, Staple Hill) are all far enough away from each other that you can't  really  keep them together as the Bristol portion of the seat becomes illogical, and then you separate  them from areas like Oldland Common and Patchway. But as a local you might disagree.

The best place for a cross is the 4 wards running along the city edge from Filton to Staple Hill. This has the added benefit of ensuring that Bristol's second university (UWE) finds itself in a Bristol seat (a lot of these students live in Fishponds in Bristol proper).

This would be my suggestion:

 

You can swap Yate and Thornbury round if you're so inclined. I went for this formation as I was reluctant to separate Yate from Chipping Sodbury which is practically contiguous with the town.

[vileplume]

Somerset



Lots of churn. Taunton Deene is now just Taunton thanks to shrinkage.  New Birdgwater seat. Weston Super Mare has shrunk, might be held by Labour whenever they form the next government. bath and Bristol got a lot of work....



Jacob Rees-Mogg's constituency got cracked HARD, but I suspect he can win Frome. Bath Expands. Fifth new Bristol seat in the east of the city and includes New Cheltenham. +1 Lab. Filton & Bradley Stoke loses the coastal territory. May also be a Labour target in a competitive election.

No it didn't, it's Chris Skidmore's Kingswood that's got the chop. The monstrosity that is Keynsham & North East Somerset (which crosses into Gloucestershire...) is technically Rees-Mogg's seat. It's probably more Tory than his current seat too as the Bristol suburbs brought in are quite heavily Tory inclined whilst Midsomer Norton and environs still have a bit of a Labour vote (albeit diminished).

In any case if these boundaries come to pass Rees-Mogg may agree to stand in Frome to allow Skidmore to stand in Keynsham & North East Somerset. In either constituency he'll have no problems winning. However I doubt these boundaries will survive public consultation, crossing the Gloucestershire-Somerset boundary unnecessarily as well as giving Kingswood to axe for no good reason is prime pitchfork bait.

Nah it’s not more Tory than the current boundaries, Midsomer Norton, Peasedown don’t vote Labour any more - and the countryside around Bath votes Lib Dem. You’re exchanging areas where the Tories win 5-1 for areas they win 2-1 at best. Labour nearly won Banes on 30% turnout in May, and that was including Bath. Clearly the Keynsham, Clutton, Timsbury, Paulton part have swung hard back to Labour.

Also this is hardly unprecedented, it’s basically a return to the old Wansdyke seat Labour held 1997-2010.

Don't agree at all. Labour would have nearly won BANES because of Bath, where there is a large 'natural' Labour vote nowadays (university town), but the Lib Dems have got it heavily squeezed in most elections. It's not because of Keynsham (no idea where you pulled that from...). Honestly Bath would be a comfortably Labour seat if not for Lib Dem entrenchment (à la Canterbury except even more extreme as it's tightly drawn around the city and lacks rural/small town areas).

Also whilst Midsomer Norton and environs don't vote Labour nowadays they hardly vote Tory by 5-1!! Radstock and Westfield still even have Labour councillors. The areas added from Kingswood are some of the Tories best areas of that constituency and are areas where they squash Labour nowadays.

[vileplume]

I'm not familiar with how Wales looks on the ground, but even I can see how ugly this is. Ceredigion Preseli is probably the worst. Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, Islwyn and Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney are also very strange - why cross into neighbouring valleys instead of drawing them north-south like now? Ugh.

A constituency called Ceredigion and North Pembrokeshire existed from 1983-1997 on similar boundaries though it never stretched as far a St Davids. Due to this arrangement having precedent it was always likely they'd bring it back. As others have said this part of Pembrokeshire is north of the Landsker line making it the much more Welsh speaking part of Pembrokeshire which thus does fit reasonably well with Ceredigion. This arrangement may look ugly but it's much better than extending Ceredigion east into much more culturally 'English' Montgomeryshire.