At midday tomorrow the Boundary Commission for England will publish their first draft proposals for the 499 constituencies in England. The Welsh Commission will do the same for their 29 seats. The Scottish Commission is expected to announce their plans in the near future.
Their proposals are being released under embargo today to political parties and MPs. When this happened in 2011, various political blogs had been leaked copies of the plans by close of play the same day, so whilst the Liberal Democrats will be respecting the embargo, don’t be surprised if others don’t and there’s a lot of online chatter about it later today.
A well prepared boundary review team
Months of preparation leave us better prepared to respond to this review than ever before – and our dry run in 2011/12 gave us extensive insight into how the process will unfold.
Simon Drage has been appointed to lead the UK-wide Liberal Democrat response to the review. Simon is an excellent campaigner with history in Sutton and York Lib Dems; he also ran the campaign that saw us win Norwich South in 2010. Simon should be the first port of call for anyone with any queries about the boundary review, and he can be contacted at [email protected].
In each region of England and in Wales, a volunteer review coordinator was appointed at the start of 2016. They have been working within regions to draw up plans that local areas feel best fit their local communities. So we start with a clear, bottom-up and locally driven, view on what would work best.
Just the beginning of consultation – not the final plan
The announcement of the draft plans is just the start of a 12-week consultation period which includes public hearings across the country. This itself is just the start of a process which will last two years with a final result in 2018. In 2011/12 the locally-based, well-argued Liberal Democrat and community-led arguments to change those first drafts were often successful.
For example, the 2011 draft proposals saw Lewes constituency abolished, but a strong campaign from local residents in the area won the day and the seat was re-created in the final draft.
So look out for the draft plans in the next day or two. If you think they don’t work for your area, make contact with your regional coordinator, and help us respond. But please work through that coordinator – not directly with the Boundary Commission or by comments in the press.
One strong, united Lib Dem submission will be stronger than fragmented or contradictory submissions from different parts of the party. That’s why it’s important that everyone engages with and works through their regional coordinator in England, and the coordinators for Scotland and Wales. To contact your state or regional co-ordinator, email [email protected].
Thanks in advance for everything party members across the UK will do to help shape the Liberal Democrat response to the review. Your time and input will make a big difference.
* Dave McCobb is Deputy Director of Campaigns & Elections for the Liberal Democrats and is also a councillor in Kingston Upon-Hull.
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11 Comments
Hmmm.
In some weird way I don’t understand, is this linked to the resignation of our former PM?
A by election at Witney. Do not laugh but this is what we may have been waiting for. Ignore the 6% at the 2015 election, the vote should soar if we work it hard. This might be the moment.
Well the by-election will have to be in the existing constituency.
Good luck in marshalling the troops Dave.
I think your comment “In 2011/12 the locally-based, well-argued Liberal Democrat and community-led arguments to change those first drafts were often successful” is rose-tinted though. I can think of several examples (Cornwall, Thornbury & Yate, Yardley etc) where we completely lost out in the revisions stage and allowed the Tories who were well organised (often getting hundreds of respondents to contact the commission) to split our key seats on tenuous grounds. I hope we can do better this time, if the review is to go through.
The best preparation for a Boundary review is to have lots of strong constituencies close together so that whatever way they cut you up, you still have a strong vote in each now constituency.
Now if someone had started to plan for this six years ago rather than six months ago, we might have behaved like a party interested in its long term future, rather than like a bunch of MPs hooked on getting their next bit of legislation through while they were still in power.
Reducing the number of MPs is a disaster for democracy. A shallower pool of talent from which to draw ministers and committee chairs. MPs spread more thinly. The pefect way to reduce still further the influence the smaller parties in day to day politics.
Reducing the number of MPs is not a disaster for democracy – centralising so much power in Westminster is the problem!
We should be massively reducing the number of MPs – about 300 max. And 75 Lords.
Rigid term limits for all those elected as MP, Lords and Councillor (and SPADs too – they can join the party). Immediate use of STV too.
Parliament has become a bloated mess and we should not hesitate to reduce it.
Reducing the number of seats is maybe a good idea in terms of the number of MPs, but if anything Parliament as a whole may become less proportionately representative the fewer MPs we have (think of the reductio ad absurdum case where we have one MP who becomes a Conservative dictator). This is why a system involving proportional representation is the only fair way. LibDems were very foolish to press for a referendum on the cynically tactical AV system (I, a LibDem voted against) and so we are left with the possibility of a one-party hegemony in England ( maybe in the UK if it survives). LibDems are not blameless fro throwing up the opportunity to have pressed for fairness rather than grabbing some power at any price. Thank you Nick!
I hope while some in the party focus on the minutiae of local boundary changes we take the opportunity to highlight the massive democratic failure of this tinkering with our broken politics. All this talk on the radio this morning about some votes being worth more than others…. Give me strength!
The US Congress has less members than the UK Parliament despite there being almost 6 times the population but they have State Congresses each with a Senate and House of Representatives or equivalent. Likewise in the UK there are 3 regional Governments with elected Legislatures which were not there before 1999, except in Northern Ireland. The latter also had an elected Senate as well as a House of Commons until the NI Government was abolished in the 1970s.
However the population has increased in Britain so it seems wrong to reduce the number of elected members of Parliament whilst increasing the number of unelected peers vastly. We need a radical change as a matter of urgency but we will not get it with the present party system.