Tim Montgomerie
The equalisation of constituency sizes - a reform that will significantly address the advantage currently enjoyed by Labour from the division of seats across the UK - will create many unnatural seats. That is the predictable conclusion of a new report written by Lewis Baston for Democratic Audit.
The BBC highlights some of the consequences:
- "Urban seats in cities like Doncaster and Coventry would have to take in countryside wards with few shared interests";
- "One constituency would have to unite areas in the Isle of Wight and Hampshire";
- "The island of Anglesey would be joined to Bangor across the Menai Strait"; and
- "A "Devonwall" seat would give one MP responsibility for parts of Cornwall and Devon."
Many small conservatives will object to these unnatural seats but they are a necessary consequence of eliminating the disparity whereby "the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, Andrew Turner, was elected by 103,480 voters, while the member for Arfon in north Wales, Plaid Cymru's Hywel Williams, answers to 42,998 people."
