UK parliamentary boundary review

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If remotely accurate then what an absolute fiasco of a set of boundaries. Unhinged.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The basic problem is that they have mostly tried to expand existing seats where possible (the sort of thing that you would do if you were ignorant of Welsh geography), and the result is a consistent disaster.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I take the view that you can actually get from Meirionydd to Montgomeryshire in a reasonably direct fashion, and the only reason it's pitchforky is the belief of some Welsh nationalists that they should effectively have preserved seats. A lot of Meirionydd does in any case face similar issues and have similar demographics to Montgomeryshire.

Yes, they have a lot of similarities and historical links. Arguing that Machynlleth has little in common and little to do with Dolgellau is howlingly hysterical. Another partial option is returning Corwen et al to Meirionnydd. In practical terms the political objections (and those should never really be a factor anyway) don't stand up: party affiliation is looser in rural Wales than just about anywhere in Britain south of Scotland and there's no obvious reason why a Plaid candidate prepared to put the work in could not do well in western Montgomery.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Loving the new North Wales 'Valleys' too.

'Clearly the inland areas must be the hinterland of the coast'

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Depends which bit of Ceredigion. There's a case for combining the northern half of the county with Montgomery, with which it has very strong links: human, transport and cultural. The trouble is that the southern half of the county has very few links with points eastward (for basic physical geography reasons: the same issue as with the Trans-Berwyn silliness that everyone who knows the area not at all thinks is a good idea and no one who actually knows it agrees) but, instead, has strong links with both Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Had a look over some of the counter-proposals and there's a fairly consistent pattern of Labour proposing cautiously sensible modifications (often ones I'd chose in their shoes) and the Tories proposing egregious gerrymanders (see the map YL posted for an example!) and just plain odd stuff. I'm mildly shocked at how bad some of their submissions are, frankly. This really isn't a thing to respond to with half-arsed amateurism - have they forgotten the '95 Review?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Basically they've put far too much weight on trying to preserve existing constituencies in some form rather than accepting that the new rules and the seat reduction combine to necessitate an entirely new map. And that horror show, that fiasco, that embarrassment, is the result. The hideous Monmouthshire map could have been avoided by accepting that Newport is not big enough, under the new rules, for two constituencies, for instance.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Pleased at the changes to the map in Co. Durham: goes from one of the very worst set of proposals in the entire country to about as good as you're likely to see under the present (bad, deficient, awful) rules: it's nice that they've listened to reason somewhere. Less pleased that the mess in the Urban West Midlands and the Potteries has not been sorted out, but that was always less likely.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In practice you're always talking of a small handful of seats. Because of the strange quirk of the 2005 election seeing a big Labour majority on a small Labour popular vote lead, a lot of Conservatives convinced themselves that there was a massive pro-Labour bias in the system, thus this new rules. And that was always a complete delusion: the reason for that odd result was Labour performed poorly in many usually 'safe' seats in 2005 (largely due to direct losses of votes to the LibDems over Iraq) but held up well against the Conservatives in marginals and swingy seats.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's also the case that the factional landscape on Merseyside is undergoing a 'degree' of turmoil at the moment, and that the Unite/Left block was never as dominant as outsiders tended to assume. A good illustration of all of this is the trouble that Ian Byrne is in right now, even if he does survive in the end.

Anyway, if a seat in the Commons can't be found for McGovern then as she's seen as a useful junior minister type figure, she'll presumably be given a peerage: c.f. Bryan Davies in 1997 or Doris Fisher back in 1970.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mims Davies chicken running a second time, you say

Jesus Christ. Is this a record?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The post boundary changes Stoke South is effectively a new constituency with an old name, and sort of is officially as well: it is now a County Constituency, rather than a Borough constituency. The boundaries are also very odd, but that goes without saying.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They love wealds/wolds this time.

Subtle protest against Brexit.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The addition of the Swansea valley to Brecon & Radnor may make Labour competitive again here forty years after they ceased to be after a previous boundary change, or it may give the Lib Dems a new source of tactical votes.

The local Party in Brecon & Radnor will want to give it a go with these boundaries, as will the one around Pontardawe. Genuinely no reason not to. Could be quite a messy contest.

Clwyd North and Clwyd East are both marginally Tory, while Wrexham moves a little in their direction.  The "Glyndŵr" area may provide enough Labour votes to make them competitive in Montgomeryshire & Glyndŵr, but they may need to get the votes of people in Montgomeryshire who have previously voted tactically for the Lib Dems.

Doubt there would be much partisan effect from the Wrexham changes: the Maelor is very Conservative, but the other area going into the constituency is generally pretty Labour in General Elections (local elections in Wrexham being every bit as Special and local elections in North Wales are apt to be). The Berwyns horror story of a constituency will certainly be a very messy contest: again, Labour have no reason not to give it a go, for all their lack of history in Montgomery.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just doing the numbers for the B-R-CT seat and if we break its electorate down by county, then we have:

Brecon - 47.0
Radnor - 29.0
Glamorgan - 24.0

However, if we add the Brecon part of the Swansea Valley to the Glamorgan part, then we find that the proportion of the electorate in the Swansea Valley comes to 35.1%. The proportion of the existing Brecon & Radnor in the Swansea Valley is 14.8%.

In the Cross Berwyns horror, then the proportions are 68.0% from the existing Montgomery and 32% from the existing Clwyd South. If we switch to counties, then the figures are 65.5% Montgomery and
34.5 Denbighshire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

When Labour used to be competitive in Brecon & Radnor, before 1985, did they have any areas of strength in the bits which remained in Powys other than the Ystradgynlais area?  I can't really think of anywhere else in the current constituency which strikes me as a likely Labour stronghold, but I may be missing something, and they were still getting respectable votes in the 1980s and 1990s, which must have been coming from somewhere.

Brecon, which has some large estates especially at its western end, was the main one and is one of those Marches/Mid Wales towns that is not the very tidy place people assume, but there was a degree of residual strength in some of the other towns, especially Presteigne, but also Knighton and (prepare for a surprise) Crickhowell, which hadn't gentrified much back then.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

At least according to the Electoral Calculus figures, Bridgend remains narrowly Tory...

Not a chance, ftr.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What essentially happened was that a) certain peculiarities of the 2005 election were widely misunderstood and that b) David Cameron acted, as he often did, in an extremely petty manner about something that had annoyed him.

So for a) the issue was that in 2005, Labour won a large majority despite only a small lead in the popular vote, and in fact won a majority of seats in England despite (very) narrowly trailing in the popular vote there. This was taken by many Conservatives as a sign of 'bias' in the electoral system created by the way in which electoral boundaries were then drawn. Which was nonsense: what had happened was that Labour had an absolute shocker of an election amongst more liberal-minded voters as well as Muslims and students due to various controversial decisions made during the 2001-5 Parliament, but also had another outstanding election with Lab-Con swing voters. Vote-shares and majorities dropped and sometimes collapsed in constituencies where they had previously been very high, but at the same time some seats that had been unexpectedly gained in 1997 were actually held. The result was an unusually large mismatch between seats won and votes polled.

Meanwhile for b) it happens that Oxfordshire missed out on gaining an extra seat at the Fifth Periodical Review by a literal handful of electors, and that this infuriated and enraged David Cameron who was, of course, an Oxfordshire MP.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One issue is incorporating the dreadful Redfield & Wilton attempts at polling Wales into their model.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I suspect the issue is the same as Hereford and a lot of the oppositional vote that used to plump for the Liberals ended up defaulting to Labour in 2017 for want of any alternative and mostly stayed that way in 2019 for the same reason. Central Devon is a very rural constituency and must have one of the highest percentage of its workforce employed in agriculture in England. Crediton is one of those West Country towns that is a bit more industrial than you'd assume at first, of course. It also suggests that Mel Stride is not a very well-liked incumbent, as 55% in 2019 is a howlingly awful showing for a constituency with that sort of profile.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Obviously these particular projects are always tricky and there are additional issues this time, but I do find myself pulling a face at some of the numbers there.