The big boundary con

The upcoming election will be fought on new boundaries in many constituencies, as well as in a small number of new constituencies.  The boundary review that brought this about was intended to even up the size of constituencies (to an average of between 70,000 and 80,000) and to end the anomaly of the party with the most votes not necessarily winning the election.


However, it does not appear to have worked.  Far from it.

A report in this morning's copy of The Sun illustrates just how bad the system still is:

As you can see, if Labour and the Conservatives get an equal share of the popular vote at 35% each, Labour still manage to end up with almost 100 more seats than the Tories; in fact they end up with the magical 326 seats needed to form a majority in the House.  On the other hand, the Tories need to get over 40% of the vote to get even the slimmest of majorities.

How is this fair?

The main problem lies in the distribution of the constituencies.  In the Labour strongholds of Scotland, Northern England and the inner cities, the Labour party enjoys much smaller populations, with the smallest being around 22,000 in northern Scotland.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, enjoy their greatest support in the Shires and the southern constituencies.  They hold the "largest" constituency, the Isle of Wight, with a population of approx 110,000.

This shows a marked difference in the effort required on the part of the major parties.  Whereas Labour only need between 10,000 and 20,000 votes to win 50% of the vote in many of their constituencies, the Conservatives need to poll over 55,000 votes on the Isle of Wight in order to win the same percentage.  This means that Labour are able to win almost five constituencies in comparison to one for the Conservatives.

What is needed is not the token realignments of the last boundary review (which, for the record, boosted Labour's vote in a number of key constituencies at the expense of the Conservatives) but a root-and-branch review.  The Boundary Commission say that the physical size of constituencies is not taken into consideration, so they should prove this.  If Scotland needs giant constituencies up in the Highlands and Islands in order to find 70,000 voters then so be it.  Not only will it increase the fairness in the system, but it will also reduce the costs by slashing the number of MPs.

Unfortunately, it is too late for any changes to level the playing field in time for May, so this will just remain another factor in Labour's favour.  The consequences are clear, the Conservatives will have to work five times as hard as Labour if this country is to get the change it needs.