UK parliamentary boundary review

[CumbrianLefty]

Don't think much has happened on the legislation front since the parameters were set.

But people are already starting to suggest ideas

[CumbrianLefty]

I see that the Copeland/Windermere monstrosity that was one of the most "notable" creations of the original 600 seat review has - amazingly - been revived. Absolutely not impressed.

[CumbrianLefty]

Their estimate seems notably less good for Tories than the Electoral Calculus one, though.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yeah electoral calculus has a twelve-seat gain for the tories while New Statesman has six and even has lib dems gaining seats. Who's more reliable.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/boundaries2023.html

Electoral Calculus is generally crap. Hope this helps

[CumbrianLefty]

When will some or all of the seemingly-unending UK boundary reviews actually be put into effect by Parliamentary act(s)?

By the second half of 2023, appears to be the plan.

[CumbrianLefty]

There’s still rumours that the election will happen before these boundaries come in- which would mean we’d lose out on the joy of watching MPs fight over seats.

Not if the latest poling is indicative of the near future, it won't.

[CumbrianLefty]

The final part of this stage comes in a few days, when the Northern Ireland proposals are published.

[CumbrianLefty]

Terrible map, no VRA districts and draws out liberal democrats.

Sorry, what?

[CumbrianLefty]

Any chance Westmorland and Lonsdale survives the boundary review ?

Possibly in a heavily modified form.

Unsurprisingly its the Lib Dems whose proposal tries hardest to keep it.  They add the southern end of Copeland district (Millom and surroundings; IIRC this is where one of our posters lives, so perhaps he will comment) to the Barrow constituency, allowing it not to include the Cartmel peninsula (the Grange-over-Sands area, which is only connected to the rest of the proposed Barrow seat by rail, something they repeatedly point out).  So Cartmel can stay in Westmorland & Lonsdale, and they manage to move only two wards into their Morecambe-based seat; all that means it can just expand to the historic county boundary in Eden district, taking in Kirkby Stephen and Appleby-in-Westmorland but not Penrith.  Even this is surely notionally Tory, but the Lib Dems have a local track record in some of the added areas and I think they'd fancy their chances of Farron holding it, particularly if the Tories aren't doing that well nationally.

Elsewhere in Cumbria they propose Whitehaven & Workington and Penrith & Solway seats and support the BCE's Carlisle.  Their partisan motivation is fairly obvious, but IMO their proposal works better than either the Initial Proposals (which the Tories support) or Labour's, which like the Lib Dems' merges Whitehaven and Workington, but unlike the Lib Dems' puts the more rural parts of Copeland district in a seat with the Kendal/Windermere area over the fells.  So the Lib Dems might have a chance here.

Of course the "traditional counties" brigade don't like it, but I have long been fairly relaxed about such a thing happening - the links of the area with Furness are maybe more relevant than those of historic Cumberland these days.

[CumbrianLefty]

Indeed, genuinely unbelievable.

(that they can't spell "you're", that is)

[CumbrianLefty]

The proposals for Cumbria are much improved (though could still be tidied up more)

[CumbrianLefty]

Alison McGovern could conceivably go for Birkenhead if Mick Whitley (widely seen as a stop-gap even when he was adopted in 2019) actually retires?

I wouldn't rate her "factional background" as overly important tbh - she is neither the loudest or most tribal from that wing of the party. And given that her seat *is* effectively being abolished (one of just a very few Labour MPs for which that is the case) she would likely be given dispensation by party HQ to look for a berth elsewhere if she wants.

[CumbrianLefty]

Mims Davies chicken running a second time, you say

[CumbrianLefty]

An interesting impact of the polls is how little discussion there has been about the partisan nature of the changes; I remember when these changes and voter ID were seen as the things that would help them keep their majority!

Though having said this, boundary reviews have tended to be less of a boost for the Tories than many often imagine they might be. People may be influenced by the pre-1983 changes, though they were unusual in that a *lot* of under-sized Labour seats were around by that time - in other words those seats were unusual in how much they benefited the blue team, not the norm.

[CumbrianLefty]

 In Worcestershire, the changes to the boundaries are even more minor, as Redditch gains some territory from Mid Worcestershire, but again there is a name change as the latter seat becomes Droitwich & Evesham.

This is a relatively rare example of a name change that is both sensible and a genuine improvement on the current one (some may recall that the old Mid Worcestershire pre-1997 contained Redditch and was a pretty fundamentally different seat to the later version)

[CumbrianLefty]

Whitehaven & Workington also appears to be notionally Conservative, though more narrowly than the existing Copeland

What are the notionals you have seen for that one?

I would have thought it fairly close even in 2019.

[CumbrianLefty]

I am slightly surprised it is that big tbh.

Trudy Harrison's lack of interest in contesting it surely tells its own story.

[CumbrianLefty]

The figures are very obviously wrong, as there's no way that a constituency including the entire postindustrial coastal strip other than Maryport would have had a majority only slightly lower than the Workington constituency.

I asked Pete in the other place about the final boundaries, and he gave a Tory majority of 2073.

Which sounds a bit more believable, though maybe still slightly on the high side.

[CumbrianLefty]

Thank you very much for doing these summaries

[CumbrianLefty]

In other words, it would be better overall.

Never forget the 5% variation limit arose from a lengthy grift from the likes of Policy Exchange about how the existing arrangements gave Labour A hUgE aNd PeRmAnEnT iNbUiLt AdVaNtAgE - and the original proposal for only 600 MPs had similar overtly partisan motivations.

[CumbrianLefty]

And as far as the reduction in Welsh seats is concerned, a Labour government would have agreed to that in due course just as they did for the Scottish seats cut that came in for the 2005 GE.

The other changes, not so much.

[CumbrianLefty]

Post 2015, It's better to think of it as an advantage for the "progressive" parties than for Labour specifically.

It's not a significant advantage though and has more to do with demographic trends.

The game's the game ultimately. The Tories have a built in advantage in terms of councils but you never hear about that.

And councillors, due to the "double tier" areas being mostly Tory-inclined shires. So when they do fall behind on that metric - as in May - its a sure sign things aren't going too well for them.

[CumbrianLefty]

Which, if true, is rather less beneficial for the Tories than some previous boundary reviews.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though there's also the issue that, as in the 1995 Review, the Conservatives did not do a very good job in their responses to the initial proposals, with the extra issue of a lot of MPs putting forward their own self-interested submissions, frequently conflicting with both official party submissions and those from other MPs...

And just as back then, this is symbolic of the breakdown in Tory discipline more generally.

[CumbrianLefty]

Apropos of not much, but why have some right wing posters here started sporting dark red avatars?