Unreduced, and now three gains to look forward to
August 12, 2012 1 Comment
It looks like the proposed reduction in the number of Parliamentary constituencies will not go ahead. The Prime Minister has vowed to press on in attempt to get the bill passed into law, but once the Liberal Democrats stated that they would oppose the bill was effectively dead (Labour are set against it, which leaves the Conservatives with the tricky task of getting all the minor parties to back them).
So, what does this mean for Essex? The eighteen constituencies that currently exist remain, and the minor headache that was the re-organisation is abandoned.
On current polling there would be three gains for Labour: Basildon South and East Thurrock, Harlow, and Thurrock.
My home town of Southend-on-Sea remains challenging for the centre-left, although there are clear signs that Tory support is weakening here. Whilst there is always hope, that Southend-on-Sea stayed in blue in the landslides of 1997 and 2001 suggests that there is still considerable work to do to persuade Southenders to place their trust in the red rosette.
I have never really objected to a reduction in the number of constituencies – I don’t buy Clegg’s claim that it will materially reduce the ability of parliament to hold the executive to account – but I have objected to the way it which it has been done.
The Cons have always said that PR will “destroy the constituency link”, yet this proposal seemed to destroy links with “natural constituencies” in their fetish for equality of size of electoral roll.
To create constituencies which are 95% within one county but have a few wards from the neighbouring county dropped in to “make up numbers” (or reduce the numbers in those wards’ natural constituency) is idiotic and calculated to give the residents of those orphan wards less effective representation as their new MP is more likely to develop effective links with the majority council.
If the cost of losing a half-baked proposal for reform of the House of Lords is the loss of this idiotic attempt to gerrymander and finagle our constituencies – I think we the people may have, for once, got the better end of the deal.
https://outsidethemarginals.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/another-fine-mess/