Do Nothing Dave: Planning to Re-Boundary Commission Us

Do Nothing Dave is planning to disrupt constituency boundaries immediately should he seize power with his Do Nothing Dave charms.

On the face of it getting rid of 60 MPs might seem attractive. Though any computation of cost savings based on their average cost now would of course be well wrong. Having recently suffered local government and parliamentary boundary changes there would I think be plenty of resistance to more change round the country.

My household have been boundary changed out of Whalley Range ward into Chorlton, and then out of Man central into Man Wit, with Whalley Range then boundary changed into Man Gorton.

The Tories at the BCE hearing were trying to explode all the current constituencies and gerrymander themselves some more winnables. Their proposal wilfully constructed most of them across Local Government boundaries, even suggesting that the City Centre of Manchester be included in a Salford constituency.

Tory buddies in the Unionist Party of course managed to stitch up the City of Derry so that a two-thirds Catholic electorate were represented by a more then two-thirds Unionist majority on Council Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who invented the practice to concentrate all the Federalists into one seat and take every single other seat for his Anti-Federalists, has a good deal to answer for. There's a good, illustrated discussion of the practice here.

Funniest proposal at the BCE hearing, also thrown out without discussion, was from a defective Lib Demmer. He suggested inter alia that their recently acquired Manchester seat in Withington be split three ways. Right from under John Leech. This included a combined Didsbury and Wythenshawe seat. Which would have gone down well I'm sure with all concerned.

Experts see right through the proposed move, supposedly based on the erroneous idea of 10% cost saving by having 10% less MPs, and even when undertaken by politically neutral authorities:

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said a smaller Commons would tend to exaggerate swings, but in the short term the move “would improve the Tory chances of winning”.
Rob Hayward, an elections analyst and former Tory MP, said speedier boundary reviews would favour the Tories as they would reflect Britain’s shift from urban to rural areas.[Financial Times]

Hat tip: Farmer Dale.

UPDATE Wed 13:38: Cllr Iain Lindley has kindly posted a summary of the official CCHQ alternative proposals to the BCE Hearing. These were extensive and involved a good number of radically carved up former constituencies and trans-border mix ups. Looking to these eyes like gerrymandering attempts. There is not as far as I can see the Salford-City centre Manchester mutant I remembered. But one of these does appear in the Salford Labour Party proposals which Iain has also provided. Apologies.

However it must be said that while these Salford Labour and our own representations on Whalley Range, Moston, Ardwick etc came from small party units with local interests the equivalent official Labour Party representations where largely to support the BCE proposals. As these were drawn up without an eye on the party political repercussions the Labour party pitch was not attempting to gain electoral advantage. Whereas the Tory one ...?

LOL remain opposed to Boundary Commissions changing wards and constituencies every couple of years. Cllr Lindley may be in favour of this for his own reasons. But I'm not.