UK parliamentary boundary review

[afleitch]

When I collated the ward results for Holyrood in Scotland in 2007 (the only time they were published) and engineered 'notionals' based on local elections held the same day there were notable differences, even in places where all parties stood. In that election, votes for MSP's were actually much more evenly spread across seats in both very urban and very rural areas. Only in seats where you had a very ABC1 heavy bastion did you find significant deviation from the rest of the seat.

[afleitch]

To be fair, notional results always state that they can't take account of voters voting differently if say a safe Labour ward moves into a Tory/Lib Dem marginal.

[afleitch]

The annexation of a large chunk of the Swansea valley by Brecon and Radnorshire is quite amusing though.

Real Galaxy Brain stuff. Would mean (if it stands...) that Labour would start to contest Brecon & Radnor seriously again which it hasn't done for twenty years.

Loving the new North Wales 'Valleys' too.

[afleitch]

They aren't bad. Dundee is a travesty; taken together they are about as wide as Greater London and the North East needs to be tidied up, but the central belt proposals are pretty logical.

[afleitch]

Genuinely hard to describe that abortion of a map as anything other than a professional disgrace. It's not just the obvious horrors like whatever they've done with the Rhondda, but little details: have a look at Llangollen and try not to scream.

Costa Geriatrica LIVES

[afleitch]

I'm quite impressed by how many of my proposals got adopted in some form after both the initial and revised stages in Scotland.

[afleitch]

Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire

Glasgow Central is abolished.  Its south-eastern parts, including the Merchant City part of the city centre, the Gorbals, Govanhill and Bridgeton, go to a heavily redrawn Glasgow East; meanwhile the West End goes to Glasgow North and the rest of the area south of the Clyde goes to Glasgow South West.  Glasgow North West is renamed Glasgow West, though its boundary changes are fairly minor, making gains in the Partick/Hyndland area from Glasgow North.  In addition, a small part of the Yoker area goes to West Dunbartonshire, giving that constituency a foothold in the city.  Glasgow North East shifts substantially eastwards, losing Possilpark to Glasgow North but gaining Easterhouse from Glasgow East.

Paisley & Renfrewshire North also gains a foothold in Glasgow city, by taking the Cardonald area from Glasgow South West.  In turn it loses Linwood to Paisley & Renfrewshire South and Bridge of Weir to Inverclyde, which is renamed Inverclyde & Renfrewshire West.  (Isn't Inverclyde western Renfrewshire anyway, historically speaking?)

East Dunbartonshire extends eastwards, gaining a slice of the Campsie Fells north of Kirkintilloch, and is bizarrely renamed Mid Dunbartonshire.  Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East is also bizarrely renamed Cumbernauld & Kirkintilloch in spite of still not containing anything like all of Kirkintilloch.  It also gains Chryston from Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill, which is more sensibly renamed to Coatbridge & Bellshill.  In fact, Bellshill, unlike Kirkintilloch, is reunited by the changes, with part having previously been in Motherwell & Wishaw, which gains a large eastern extension into South Lanarkshire, formerly in Lanark & Hamilton East, and is renamed Motherwell, Wishaw & Carluke.

All constituencies in this area are held by the SNP, so they lose one seat from the abolition of Glasgow Central.  The Electoral Calculus figures do not suggest much changes in terms of how vulnerable any of the seats are from the boundary changes, though the changes from East Dunbartonshire to Mid Dunbartonshire will make it slightly harder for the Lib Dems to win back and they also suggest that the changes to Glasgow North East, the closest Glasgow seat in 2019, make that a little less vulnerable to Labour.

The Glasgow North East and Glasgow East configuration was based, solely, on a suggestion I made which I'm a bit happy about

The intention was a boundary running north to south, but transport links (particularly public transport) run east/west as do the Holyrood seats.

[afleitch]

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.

Yeah. Post Government of Wales Act 2006 (and the referendum)  there would have been a reduction in Welsh seats and as with Al's point on Oxfordshire, a number of Tory shires were already at 'extra seat' level by 2010.