• Conservative Party essentially gerrymandering many of Labour's seats, including Corbyn's.
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[QUOTE]Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's seat in Parliament could be abolished under proposals from the Boundary Commission for England. Mr Corbyn represents the Islington North constituency in London, and much of it is expected to form part of a new Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington seat. Mr Corbyn would be entitled to seek selection as Labour's candidate. A source close to the Labour leader said there was "every reason to believe Jeremy will have a seat to contest". The total number of MPs is to be reduced from 650 to 600 under government plans. The boundary commissions for England and Wales are drawing up plans for new constituencies, with proposed details being published on Tuesday. [B][I][U]The Labour Party is expected to be particularly hard hit by the changes. [/U][/I][/B]Proposed changes to the boundaries in Northern Ireland have already been published. The proposed changes in Scotland are set to be published next month.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37342828[/url] Short article. No way is it accidental that the seats they cut are likely to hit Labour harder than themselves.
These plans, as with all previous boundary changes, were drawn up by a nonpartisan Boundary Commission which works like this: [url]http://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/about-us/[/url] [quote]The Chair of the Commission is the Speaker of the House of Commons, but by convention he or she does not participate in the conduct of the review or formulation of the Commission’s recommendations. The Deputy Chair therefore leads the Commission in the conduct of the review. The Deputy Chair must be a serving Judge of the High Court, and is selected and appointed by the Lord Chancellor. The Deputy Chair is supported by two other Commissioners, whose appointments are made following an open public appointments selection process.[/quote] Boundary changes pretty much always favour the Conservatives because of demographic shifts - same thing happens with the Republicans in the US and you can read more about it here: [url]http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9758[/url]
The boundaries are being redrawn by an impartial commission and as Smurfy said, the boundaries appear to favour the conservatives due to demographics. There are fewer people in the North (Labour leaning) and more in the South (Conservative leaning) so it will naturally favour the Conservatives. It's hardly the stitch-up that some people are portraying it as.
[QUOTE]The controversial review by the Commission was first ordered by David Cameron with the goal of reducing the number of MPs in the Commons from 650 to 600.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-lose-seat-boundary-changes-plans-uk-election-map-politics-labour-latest-a7238341.html[/url] This isn't exactly fully independent from the government. Not saying Cameron went "ayyy fuck labour", but it's not fully independent. Thanks for pointing it out that they largely are independent from the government, though. Didn't know that.
how is that even allowed to just redraw the amount of representatives like that. even here in the US where we invented the term they can't remove actual seats from congress
Aren't these areas owned by Labour really tiny but significant seats in the UK election that can unfairly swing results? Otherwise I don't see a issue with redrawing the map to better represent voting power.
FPTP will never be fair. Labour voters are only going to realise this when they lose everything in 2020.
[QUOTE=Sableye;51040347]how is that even allowed to just redraw the amount of representatives like that. even here in the US where we invented the term they can't remove actual seats from congress[/QUOTE] The idea here is to reduce the number of MPs as there are simply too many of them - there are MPs who get elected by 30,000 people with others having to be elected by 100,000 people. What the commission is trying to do is merge the smaller seats and split up some of the bigger ones so that the average voter numbers is around 75,000. History lesson time: Boundaries of constituencies have to be redrawn every now and again in order to maintain some sort of legitimacy. In the 19th Century, the UK parliament had many examples of 'Rotten Boroughs' where constituencies were made up of a handful of people. The UK parliament has been around for so long that some of the ancient parliamentary constituencies were no longer populated by many people meaning that they could be easily influenced. The most famous 'Rotten Borough' was [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Sarum_(UK_Parliament_constituency)"]Old Sarum[/URL] which was made up by [B]7[/B] people. This meant the Parliamentary seat was easily bought and influenced by generations of the same families. This became such an issue that Parliament had to redraw the boundaries to eliminate these corrupt seats - something we've been doing ever since. The Boundary Commission is continuing this process - the last time the boundaries were redrawn was in 2000 (16 years ago). The country's demographics have changed drastically since then so this has been a long time coming. [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_Parliament_constituencies"]The current largest constiuency is 'Isle of Wight' with an electorate of ~105,000 people whilst the smallest is 'Na h-Eileanan an Iar' with an electorate of only ~21,000 people.[/URL] I hope this is useful to non-brits who might not understand our system and to Brits who perhaps don't know either.
You guys need a senate.
[QUOTE=download;51043932]You guys need a senate.[/QUOTE] Why? The House of Lords performs the job of a second chamber pretty well and is free from the partisanship of an elected Senate. The Conservatives having an elected majority in both Houses of Parliament? No thanks. [editline]13th September 2016[/editline] No government has a majority in the House of Lords due the influence of the cross-benchers so they actually scrutinise the legislation rather than partisan-ly waving it through.
[QUOTE=Mythman;51043939]Why? The House of Lords performs the job of a second chamber pretty well and is free from the partisanship of an elected Senate. The Conservatives having an elected majority in both Houses of Parliament? No thanks. [editline]13th September 2016[/editline] No government has a majority in the House of Lords due the influence of the cross-benchers so they actually scrutinise the legislation rather than partisan-ly waving it through.[/QUOTE] A senate if structured right would have the power to prevent gerrymandering and show how out of touch the House of Commons is. At the moment all you have is a House of Lords made up of old people who are usually conservative leaning.
It's so hypocritical of Labour to complain about boundary reform. When they massively gerrymandered the boundaries against the conservatives. I mean they managed to get a majority of 70 with 35% of the vote back in 2005.
What you guys really need to do is ditch FPTP.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;51044007]What you guys really need to do is ditch FPTP.[/QUOTE] Everyone needs to ditch FPTP.
[QUOTE=download;51043980]A senate if structured right would have the power to prevent gerrymandering and show how out of touch the House of Commons is. At the moment all you have is a House of Lords made up of old people who are usually conservative leaning.[/QUOTE] What do you mean by 'showing how out of touch the House of Commons is'? Old =/= Conservative. If you look at the make-up of the House of Lords: [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords"]you can see that there are more centre-left leaning Lords than there are Conservative leaning ones (252 Conservative vs 209 Labour & 105 Liberal Democrat [252 v 314].[/URL] Add that to the cross-benchers (177) who are politically neutral and the House of Lords is far from 'a bunch of posh, old conservatives'. [editline]13th September 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=GoDong-DK;51044007]What you guys really need to do is ditch FPTP.[/QUOTE] Now that I do agree with
[QUOTE=download;51043980]At the moment all you have is a House of Lords made up of old people who are usually conservative leaning.[/QUOTE] isn't that the same thing as a senate
[QUOTE=download;51043980]At the moment all you have is a House of Lords made up of old people who are usually conservative leaning.[/QUOTE] this actually isn't true if anything the HoL is more liberal than the HoC
[QUOTE=MissZoey;51039726][url]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-lose-seat-boundary-changes-plans-uk-election-map-politics-labour-latest-a7238341.html[/url] This isn't exactly fully independent from the government. Not saying Cameron went "ayyy fuck labour", but it's not fully independent. Thanks for pointing it out that they largely are independent from the government, though. Didn't know that.[/QUOTE] It would be impossible to make it completely independent from the government though. It has to have some oversight, and it has to take its orders from someone. And the people involved will typically be called right or left wing shills regardless of who heads it.
If you transplanted these boundaries onto the 2015 results, the Lib Dems would have 3 seats ([url=http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9759]source[/url])
Labour are gunna get smashed in 2020 so it doesnt really make a difference lol
Title is pretty sensationalist, gerrymandering is more deliberate, trying to favor one side, while this is looking pretty much impartial.
[QUOTE=Sableye;51040347]how is that even allowed to just redraw the amount of representatives like that. even here in the US where we invented the term they can't remove actual seats from congress[/QUOTE] The UK doesn't have a constitution. Technically parliament could pass an act instating the Prime Minister as dictator for life, but no one ever does that because of convention/not wanting to set precedents/not being cunts. But yeah the House of Commons does have too many MPs. You can see during PMQ's that many MPs have to stand because their literally aren't enough seats for them all. A nation as small as the UK doesn't need 650 MPs in their lower house (they have more elected members in their lower house than the US has in their lower house - despite having a population five times larger).
an important thing to note is that the fewer seats there are in the UK, the less likely third parties are to win seats. UKIP and the greens aren't going to be winning anything in 2020, a far cry from ukip and the greens both being predicted to have 2 seats each in the 2015 exit poll. the fewer seats there are, the more of a two-party system the UK becomes.
[QUOTE=Bobie;51044268]an important thing to note is that the fewer seats there are in the UK, the less likely third parties are to win seats. UKIP and the greens aren't going to be winning anything in 2020, a far cry from ukip and the greens both being predicted to have 2 seats each in the 2015 exit poll. the fewer seats there are, the more of a two-party system the UK becomes.[/QUOTE] As long as MPs are elected from single-member districts, it will always be a two-party system. Doesn't matter if they are elected via FPTP, preferential vote or the most-complicated Condorcet method out there. If there were more seats it might be the case that, overall, there would be more than two parties in parliament, but each constituency would be a localised two-party system. Like how Melbourne in Australia is a Labor and Greens two-party system, while everywhere else is a Liberal/National and Labor two-party system.
[QUOTE=sb27;51044264](they have more elected members in their lower house than the US has in their lower house - despite having a population five times larger).[/QUOTE] The US is a bad example though. They have a population per seat in the House of around 700,000. That's verging on being useless as a representative democracy.
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