” while opposing or amending the redistricting approach”

Gosh, party that benefits from gerrymandering should oppose getting rid of said gerrymandering, shock.

Not that I expect the redistricting to be any fairer, just in a different direction. However, Labour had the chance to sort this out and deliberately didn’t in order to benefit themselves so they, if not their constituents, deserve everying they are about to receive.

Well, Falco @1 already raises the truism about constituency size and gerrymandering, so I’ll just repeat what I’ve already said to Sunder on this at Next Left, where this was first posted (and to which Sunder has already kindly replied):

‘Sunder

You have no problem with equal-sized constituencies?

Can I suggest respectfully that, from a sense of Rawlsian justice, you should, as unequal constituency size redresses turnout imbalances, which are themselves caused by systematic power and resource imbalances.

Not supporting the retention of differentials in constituency size, it could be argued,is to accept a rightwing logic which ignores structural imbalances in society, and think poor people are just lazy.

I’ve done some initial maths on it at http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/06/28/constituency-size-and-liberal-norms/

@1 Falco

The current system isn’t gerrymandered. The imbalance between Tory and Labour votes when translated into seats is a direct consequence of the FPTP system (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm40/4090/volume-2/acdmcs01.PDF)

The proposed bill is a gerrymander in favour of Highland Lib Dems for a start, exempting them from the rules on size and population of constituency. Worse, by not considering unregistered voters the new proposals will not do what they claim to be doing and are likely to work against Labour, as unregistered voters fall into groups more likely to vote for them.

I fail to see how any bill reducing the number of MPs while not changing the size of the Government or introducing new checks to its powers can do anything other than make Government less accountable to us and our elected representatives.

@2 With the exception of those in the Forces serving overseas who were very badly served at the last election, (wonder who they tend to vote for), everyone had an opportunity to vote. Regardless of “systematic power and resource imbalances”, they had the option and if they choose not to take it up then their opinion will not count. That is how democracy works but if you want to advocate a different system then go right ahead.

@3 Yes FPTP plays a significant part in this but it is not the whole story. Population drift is only taken into account every ten years, using the figures from 5 years before and with no attempt to follow consistent trends. This has for a very long time advantaged Labour and given that they let this mess develop in order to gain an advantage, squeals from that corner about the clear up being unfair are rather hard to take. However, I do agree that the Highlands issue does seem unfair.

Re the number of MPs; what is the perfect number to have? It is unlikely that we’re bang on the money and there are decent arguments both for more and for fewer. They happen to have gone for fewer.

When Sunder says:

“It would in my view be appropriate for Labour to back AV, while both opposing and offering reasoned amendments on the redistricting proposals”

This should be enough to remember opposition to the BILL will not spur on sharing a platform with the Tories, as is implied in today’s Guardian.

“Why Labour should support AV while opposing the Bill” – because supporting AV is consistent with their most recent election manifesto and opposing AV would be rank hypocrisy of the kind only Labour can manage; and because opposing the Bill is pure political opportunism.

Why are your MPs attacking the government for implementing cuts when Darling said his cuts would be worse than Thatcher’s?

Why are your MPs attacking AV when it was in the manifesto they got elected upon?

Hey Paul, why not just give Labour voters ten votes each and leave Tory voters with one vote between them?

/sarcasm

[1] The Boundary Commission is already tasked to produce seats of equal size – the difference between its new and old remits will merely be that it is now to take no notice of local authority boundaries. My guess is that when, in the interests of “equal size” it produces 100+ seats that cross (shire) county boundaries rural Tories will get very cross with it. Expert estimates reckon the advantage to the Tories is not more than ten seats.

One point that does not seem to have been much noticed is that fixed term Parliaments make primary elections perfectly feasible. An amendment to provide for them (all on one day, I guess: May 1 2014 along with locals would minimise costs) would be interesting – it would I think meet the Equalities objection as well. An objection to primaries is obviously the cost to the candidates, but I see this as an asset: it would provide a focus for campaigns, community groups etc to carry out political fundraising.

I have no problem with broadly equalised constituency sizes,

Current constituencies are ‘broadly equal’. There are exceptions, but they are not especially significant in terms of partisan impact (Wales is over-represented, for example, but not all of the ‘extra’ seats are Labour ones). What is being proposed is something different to ‘broad equality'; the imposition of an extremely strict quota with no deviation of more than 5% allowed. Anyone who’s ever played around with electorate figures knows that it is impossible to draw a sane electoral map with rules like that. And single member constituencies that make no sense are terrible things for democracy.

though size does not explain much of the current electoral bias.

Fun fact: the Tories polled about 36% of the vote across the UK and have about 47% of seats in the Commons. Labour polled around 29% and have around 39%. Now, things were quite different in 2005, but that was just because Labour did well where it needed to, not (as the 2010 results show very clearly) because of systemic bias. Things like that can happen even if constituencies are gerrymandered for a clear relationship between votes cast and seats won; in the recent election in South Australia (where they have such a gerrymander), the Labor government was returned despite losing the 2PP vote to the Liberals. Labor’s electoral strategy had been to concentrate on the marginals, and it paid off.

Some people seem to have the wrong end of the stick about what Labour’s position is on the Bill. Here, via Left Foot Forward, is their amendment. (I hadn’t seen it when I wrote the initial post).

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/07/electoral-reformers-should-oppose-the-coalitions-gerrymandering/

“That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be a referendum on moving to the Alternative Vote system for elections to the House of Commons, declines to give a Second Reading to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill because it combines that objective with entirely unrelated provisions designed to gerrymander constituencies by imposing a top-down, hasty and undemocratic review of boundaries, the effect of which would be to exclude millions of eligible but unregistered voters from the calculation of the electoral average and to deprive local communities of their long established right to trigger open and transparent public inquiries into the recommendations of a Boundary Commission, thereby destroying a bi-partisan system of drawing boundaries which has been the envy of countries across the world; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by a full process of pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”

@3 Yurrzem: The current system isn’t gerrymandered.

At the last election, Labour got 39.7% of the seats on 29% of the vote, and the Tories got 47.1% of the seats on 36.1% of the vote.

Thus Labour got 34% more seats than their share of the vote deserved, and the Tories got 30% more. Thuis the system is gerrymandered in favour of both the Labour and Tory parties, although more so to Labour.

When the Tories complain that the system is biased against them, what they really mean is it isn’t biased enough in favour of them. Not that Labour have any right to get on their moral high horse — they had 13 years to deliver fair votes and refused to do so, in the process breaking their manifesto promise of a referendum on it.

The truth is both Labservative parties are full of contemptable self-serving scum who hate democracy, and hate the idea of the voters having real choice.

Well if Labour does want to oppose part of this rather strange bill (half for the Lib Dems – who don’t really want it; half for the Tories – who don’t really need it) they’d better improve their arguments.

First the denunciation of “gerrymandering” will not go down well with the public. They see equal sized constituencies as being a basic part of democracy and Labour trying to defend what looks like a corrupt system.

Also the constant attacks on the Lib Dem’s exceptions sound petty (even ignoring that Lab politicians seem to think Western Isles is now Lib Dem). People accept that exceptional geography may cause special cases. To be cunning Labour should argue for more, not complain they don’t any of the current ones.

Secondly stop going on about those not on the register. Now it’s possible to take the non-registered into account when deciding constituencies. The best-known case was in pre-Civil War America, when slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating seats. This is not a good precedent.

In the end you have to base everything on voter registration. The Census is not terribly reliable (and may be even worse next year) and tends to miss out exactly the same people as voter registration does. You also need to know people’s nationalities now to know which version of the register to put them on. In the end how can you know what people are where?- look them up on the Electoral Register?

Thirdly, as far as EHRC requirements go, you could argue that something that will shake up 90% of the seats would be the perfect opportunity to get more women etc into the House.

Personally I think the Procrustean rigour that Cameron is applying to constituencies is daft and won’t in any case make much difference to party strength. But all the whingeing from Labour doesn’t sound good, even to someone who thinks they’re basically right.

I hadn’t read the Labour amendment, quoted above, before I wrote my comment. Frankly it’s about as bad as I expected.

The one important point made is about the scrapping of the public enquiries (and reviews) into proposed changes. Not many people seem to have noticed this and it should fill them (including some Tories) with alarm. Unlike most Government consultations, these actually can and do make a difference and it seems odd that a Government claiming openness and inclusiveness should want to get rid of them. Labour should stop the whingeing and campaign on this.

The reason the Government want to stop the current process is, of course, that it takes too long. Three weeks ago I commented on UK Polling Research about all the potential pitfalls of the current process for the changes – see July 7th 1.41pm here:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2740?cp=4

As you can see, even with the public inquiry phase taken out there’s still an awful lot of trouble that the process can make for the Government and Labour should be doing their best to convince coalition MPs and Peers that the fast-disappearing gains from re-drawing (see one estimate at 2.30 here:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2755 )

will not be worth all the grief the process will bring.

If the Bill actually does get passed, of course, you just start causing the grief.

…They see equal sized constituencies as being a basic part of democracy

I suspect that you greatly overestimate the interest of most people in such matters.

No one should take the Tories seriously. If they genuinely had even the remotest interest in each vote having a similar weight, they’d be diehard advocates of proportional representation. As they are not, they are either lunatics or disingenuous, or both.

I see a lot of the arguments here surrounding wider electoral reform. And they make sense. What I don’t see here is why Labour should support AV.

Some one said it was in their manifesto. But that manifesto was defeated at the election and has no mandate. And since AV would strengthen the right-wing coalition with no natural boost to smaller left-wing parties like the greens (which PR would bring) – why would Labour want it?

It’s not like this is a move towards actual proportional government so it isn’t even a matter of decent principle.

The right move for Labour might actually be much more fun.

Labour could introduce a bill on actual voting reform, offering the public a say on PR. Or maybe an ammendment to the referendum question would do – making it offer a choice on PR.

It would be voted down by the coalition. And that would destroy the lib dems utterly.

And that’s key. Labour need to ensure the Lib Dems don’t remain credible for too long – otherwise the important stuff like unemployment, public service failure and so on will not hurt the tories as their yellow shield takes the flak.

I suppose the nightmare scenario for both Labour and LibDems would be that the boundaries are redrawn but the AV referendum is lost.

17

labour don’t much care about AV one way or another. If that falls by the wayside or is voted down by the public, that would just hurt the libdems’ remaining left-leaning voters as the figleaf would be gone.

If they look like the tories out-foxed them then that can only benefit labour. meanwhile AV may strengthen the libdems without helping small left wing parties – leaving us stuck with a right leaning coalition for a long time to come.

@18
I’m not actually convinced that AV will strengthen the LibDems much (apart from looking like they gained something from the coalition). I think it’s likely that the Greens will take most of the left-leaning 2nd prefs and the LibDems will be decimated in Lib-Lab marginals (they might hold on to a few of their Lib-Con ones though).

I meant it would be a nightmare scenario in the sense that the Tories would get everything they want, and Labour and LibDems get nothing.

[16][17] I think Labour’s priority is to damage the coalition, knowing that there are many in the Liberal Democrat Party who are deeply suspicious of it. It is clearly in Labour’s interest that the cuts be introduced by a Tory minority government which 37% of people voted for last time rather than by a coalition that 60% voted for.

As to the boundary changes, I suspect that these are going to annoy everyone: long-standing community boundaries will be ripped up wholesale. I predict that at least a dozen towns with about 75k voters in them – i.e. pretty much exactly the size of one constituency – will find themselves split in twain. Indeed, the Blue Pack over on Smithson’s site are already at work on devising boundaries that dissolve towns of up to 200k people in the surrounding countryside. Liberal Conspirators need to remember that right-wing activists pine for boundaries that either equalise areas, not populations (taking “same size” literally!) or possibly equalise tax takes. They’re not going to get those, at least this time. But they’ll be as unhappy at what Cameron soups up as anyone here.

“I have no problem with broadly equalised constituency sizes”

I don’t know if the point has already been made but it doesn’t seem fair to me that an English MP should have the same size of constituency as a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MP because this would mean the English MP has a bigger work-load than in the devolved parts of Britain.

The problem with drawing constituency boundaries is that people intuitively want both equality of size (number of voters) and boundaries which relate to the real world. Let me give a highly simplified model which demonstrates the problem.

Let there be an electorate of 100, and let the quota for constituency size be 50. 40 of the voters live in the town (T) and vote Red; the other 60 live in the countryside (C) and vote Blue. Thus if the Boundaries Commission adds the 10 nearest C voters to T it produces one Red and one Blue seat; if it draws the boundary through the middle of T it produces two Blue seats. “Equal size” does not provide an algorithm to resolve this.

Community links might, but suppose the only links any of the 100 voters have is to T or C. In other words, a constituency size of 50 is artificial no matter how the boundaries are drawn.

Conclusion: in this case, it is not possible for the Boundaries Commission to avoid a gerrymander. Note that if the quota had been 33 (to produce three seats) the Commission ought to produce two Blue and one Red seats – because T is a community link larger than the quota.

Since “equal electorate” is an insufficient condition, the key question is, what secondary considerations will the Bill require the Commissioners to have regard to? I would imagine local authority areas (an obvious proxy for the “community links” of my example), but there will also be many cases where this too will be insufficient.

The only certainty would seem to be that, within a very few weeks of the full rules of engagement being known, websites will spring up showing alternative arrangements of seats which – on the 2010 result – will give Labour anything from 150 to 300 seats. The Government, through the Commission, will then have to impose one out of many by arbitrary fiat. It will be interesting, to put it mildly, to see what the Supreme Court does with it.