Turkeys, Christmas, etc.
WHAT larks! The boundary changes proposed by the Tories would hit the LibDems more than anyone else, according to a new survey (paywall). This confirms the results of a separate survey reported by the Beeb last month.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the turkeys will still be voting for Christmas this evening when the Parliamentry Voting System and Constituencies Bill comes up for its second reading.
I will be voting against, naturally, not because I oppose electoral reform (although I do), but because I object to the arbitrary reduction in the number of seats, dreamed up on the back of the anti-politics frenzy of some parts of the media. I have no problem with the equalisation of electorates – the difference in sizes between constituency electorates are hardly represented accurately by comparisons of the extreme: Isle of Wight v Westrn Isles, for example. The gap is generally much closer but if the government want to narrow that gap a bit, that’s fine by me.
And anyway, as I’ve written before, the contribution of electorate sizes to the pro-Labour bias in the electoral system is less significant than other factors.
But the actual reduction makes no sense except to the drooling village idiot tendency who rail against all politicians and whose views can be pretty much ignored. More pertinent to the debate is this post by LibDem blogger Mark Pack, which is accompanied by a graph showing the historical trend in the size of the House of Commons (click to enlarge):
Even at current levels of membership, we’re nowhere near the historical high-point. And in post-war years, membership of the Commons has lagged far behind the growth of the UK population.
Still, those arguments will have no effect on the obedient lambs of the LibDems this evening. The consequences will only be felt by them when the ballot boxes are opened at the next general election.
