ConservativeHome's Seats & Candidates blog

Rob Hayward: The boundary reviews. What do we know?

Rob Hayward is an elections analyst and the former Conservative MP for Kingswood. He has been kindly keeping ConHome readers up-to-date with the review. See his previous contributions here and here.

A lot is likely to be said in coming months about alternative plans for the required boundary reviews in relation to each county and country, however given the scale of the change that will arise from the forthcoming changes it is probably worth setting out the basic ground rules which will apply.

Reductions

Across the UK there will be 50 fewer MPs elected at the 2015 General Election than 2010. The reductions will be as follows:

• England -31
• N Ireland -2
• Scotland -7
• Wales -10

Rob Hayward: Casting further doubt on Democratic Audit's proposals for the new constituency boundaries

Rob Hayward is an elections analyst and the former Conservative MP for Kingswood.

I recently dashed off a very quick set of thoughts for ConHome concerning Lewis Baston’s ideas about the likely results of the current boundary review, as I understood them.

Despite my criticisms of the Democratic Audit (DA) plans (as reported in The Guardian), let no-one under-estimate the difficulties involved. Not only should the Democratic Audit proposals be read in this context, but the skill of the Boundary Commissions in dealing with what is both a very difficult and politically emotive subject should also be recognised.

Putting to one side the complaint that the DA ideas are party political, which I still believe (see Luton and North London for examples) there are three broad problems arising from the plans now published on their website.

Split wards
The Boundary Commission for England (BCE) has clearly stated (it is on their website if you are so inclined to look) that "in the absence of exceptional and compelling circumstances it would not be proportionate and appropriate to divide wards". These are very firm words from the Commission. I have been in the world of redistributions too long to believe that people will not see ‘their case’ as unique or compelling. It is however often too depressingly easy to identify other more meritorious ‘unique cases’. In recent discussions I have been given compelling reasons for crossing regional boundaries in Humberside, Teesside, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, the West Midlands and London - in several directions. Hardly unique nor exceptional.

Rob Hayward: Today's suggested parliamentary boundaries from Lewis Baston are incoherent, full of oddities and far from impartial

Rob Hayward is an elections analyst and the former Conservative MP for Kingswood. Here he casts considerable doubt on the accuracy of Lewis Baston's new research into the likely new parliamentary boundaries.

Lewis Baston has produced what I can best describe as an interesting set of boundary proposals published in today’s Guardian (and summarised earlier on ConHome here). It is firstly worth remembering that Lewis is active within the Labour Party, and his proposals are clearly influenced by his party loyalty. The plan is therefore overly optimistic for Labour, pessimistic for the Conservatives and very pessimistic for the Liberal Democrats.

The proposals are not helped by graphics that don’t match parts of the script (key onto a constituency in Edinburgh and you get comments concerning Dumfriesshire, whilst there are no details regarding London seats); the regional figures for the South East don’t complement the seat-by-seat analysis on other maps; and on the regional map Labour is down two but the map of specific seats suggests the Lib Dems are down two.
 
Of the specific proposals, for example, those for Eastern England do not seem to have any impartial coherence. They somehow retain two Labour seats in Luton, whcih is quite an achievement by any standards when both seats are 10,000 under-sized. Nearly every proposal for the area links Bedfordshire with Hertfordshire, while this plan keeps the two counties separate. Even following that process, however, it is nigh on impossible to create two Labour seats around Luton.

In Cheshire there are some very striking oddities starting with the Wirral seats and working east towards Manchester. I agree that one Tory is likely to lose a seat in Cheshire but the inference of the study appears to be that the Tories will have a marginal seat in the Wirral (more likely a safe seat) whilst two Lib Dem seats in Stockport becomes one ‘Lib Dem marginal’ of Stockport South. Those that know the area of Wirral/Cheshire and Manchester better than I are bemused by the suggestions.

Nice try, Lewis, but more oddities will appear as the day goes on.

The two saving graces for this plan? Firstly, that it is so obviously party biased and secondly that it is somewhat less biased than the proposals that the same person and organisation produced in December 2010!

New research suggests the Lib Dems will be hardest hit by boundary changes resulting from the reduction in MPs

By Jonathan Isaby
^{Follow Jonathan on Twitter}

"Lib Dems face crisis over new electoral map", screams the headline on the front of this morning's Guardian.

It is reporting on what it suggests is the "most detailed analysis yet" of the likely outcome of the review of constituency boundaries currently being undertaken by the various Boundary Commissions.

The research, conducted by a Democratic Audit - a research group based at Liverpool University - maps the results of last year's general election onto a set of boundaries based on a 600-seat House of Commons, which is the number of constituencies that will exist at the 2015 general election.

It suggests that each of the parties would have won fewer seats, as follows:

• Conservatives - 16 (5.2% of the party's seats)
• Labour - 17 (6.6%)
• Lib Dems - 14 (24.6%)

Gareth Knight: More evidence of the complications and consequences of the forthcoming boundary changes

Gareth Knight is a former Conservative Party agent who is now an independent political consultant specialising in party conference activity and is a Director of Conservatives for International Travel.

Last summer I wrote this article on ConHome regarding the inevitable boundary review that would come about as a result of equalising constituency sizes and reducing the number of MPs. I used Lincolnshire as the example of how such changes may impact existing constituencies.

The Boundary Commission for England has now confirmed its methodology for the review and, surprisingly, there were no specific objections to grouping northern Lincolnshire with Yorkshire for the purposes of parliamentary constituencies (though one member of the public did lobby for the historic counties to be used as the basis of the review).

The Conservative Party itself supported the European Parliament regions as the basis for the review areas, meaning the people of North and North East Lincolnshire, who spent the best part of 25 years campaigning against the artificial tie to Yorkshire in favour of the link with the rest of Lincolnshire, are now considered part of Yorkshire once again.

Not all MPs remained quiet on the EU regions. Harriett Baldwin MP, Peter Luff MP and Robin Walker MP, all lobbied for their county, Worcestershire, to be linked to the South West EU region for the purposes of the review but this proposal was rejected. It is therefore certain that none of the new constituency boundaries will cross EU regional boundaries and that Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Wight will be treated completely separately.

Boundary Commission confirms that seat reductions will be greater in Labour-dominated regions

Tim Montgomerie

Two weeks ago I wrote that the Conservative Party had, at an optimistic estimate, gained 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, TWENTY new MPs because of the passage of the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Bill.

The number of seats being lost in each part of the UK has now been confirmed:

• Wales 10
• NW England: 7
• Scotland: 7
• London: 5
• West Midlands: 5
• Yorkshire and Humber: 4
• NE England: 3
• Eastern England: 2
• East Midlands: 2
• Northern Ireland 2
• SE England: 2
• SW England: 2

That's a total reduction of 51.

It's clear why Labour peers fought so hard against this Bill. It means fewer Labour strongholds in the likes of Barnsley. It goes a long way to addressing the pro-Labour bias within the existing electoral geography.

Equalisation of constituency sizes will create unnatural seats like "Devonwall", says report

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."

Tories need 6.9% swing to win next General Election

An analysis by Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of the University of Plymouth confirms that boundary changes will add 12 seats to the Tory tally and subtract seven from Labour's parliamentary representation.  But as BBC Online reports the Tories still have a mountain to climb in order to win the next General Election outright:

"The research suggests that [David Cameron's] party needs a swing of 6.9%, down from 7.4% on the current boundaries, to re-take power.  But, this is a larger swing than the Conservatives have managed since the war; Margaret Thatcher's famous victory in 1979 was achieved with a swing of 5.3%."

It will only take a 1% swing, however, to end Labour's majority.  This coming week ConservativeHome will be publishing your views on what the Tory leadership should do in the event of a hung parliament.

1% swing will end Labour's majority

That's the view of an analysis of the finalised boundary changes in today's Times.  If the new boundary changes had been in force at last year's General Election, "Labour’s 64-seat victory would have dropped to 44 with several more seats too close to call, The Times has learnt". "However," The Times continues, "the Tories will still need a swing of 9 or 10 per cent (down from 11 per cent) to win an outright majority, meaning that the parties may have to fight for Liberal Democrat support to be able to govern after the next poll."  The opposition of Tory grassroots to co-operation with the LibDems was recently examined in a ConservativeHome poll.