Stop whingeing about boundaries, Dave

In today’s House of Commons debate about constituency boundary changes (aka the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill), Tory MPs will doubtless whinge about how unfair the present boundaries are. But the facts don’t support their arguments.

PoliticalBetting.com has today published statistics proving that the electoral system is not biased against the Tories. At the 2010 general election, it took an average of 34,940 votes to elect each Conservative MP compared with 33,370 for each Labour MP. The equivalent figure for Liberal Democrat MPs is 119,944.

As discussed in a previous post, any imbalance is mostly due to low turnouts in safe Labour seats. No amount of boundary changes can solve that problem.

To deal properly with unfairness, you would need a system of proportional representation and a serious voter registration drive in the inner cities. When the Tories support both those policies, then we’ll know how sincere they are about being fair.

POSTSCRIPT: The Tories lost the vote. No surprise there. But why are the Liberal Democrats still justifying voting against the boundary changes on the grounds that it is revenge for the loss of Lords reform? As this post points out, there are perfectly good arguments against the boundary changes that rely on neither vengeance nor petulance.

It’s the turnout, stupid

In all the current debate about the proposed parliamentary boundary changes (which David Cameron still intends to push in the Commons, despite his defeat yesterday in the Lords), hardly anyone mentions the real reason for the supposed pro-Labour bias in the electoral system: turnout.

As Mike Smithson helpfully points out today on PoliticalBetting.com, while there is a small difference in the size of electorate between Conservative-held and Labour-held seats, there is a much bigger difference in the average turnout:

The average level in CON seats was 68.4% while in LAB seats it was 61.1%. It is this gap which is behind much of the distortion.

In Labour’s heartlands, where the outcome is not in doubt, far fewer people bother to vote. This is not something you can change with legislation.

Unless there’s a drastic change in voting patterns, which I very much doubt, there will still be a much higher vote threshold for the Tories to win an overall majority than Labour however much you bring average seat sizes into line.

A higher turnout (or even compulsory voting) wouldn’t solve this problem either. All it would do is pile up bigger majorities for Labour in its safe seats.

If Cameron wants to redress the balance, his only hope is proportional representation – and we already know what he thinks about that.

Just when you thought it was safe to choose a PPC...

The corpse of Tory plans to revise parliamentary boundaries has sprung back to life.

The Telegraph reports that David Cameron plans to bring back his proposals for constituency boundary changes later this month, despite the refusal of the Liberal Democrats to support these changes in retaliation for the defeat of Lords reform. He will press ahead irrespective of the outcome of the vote in the House of Lords on Monday.

To overcome combined Labour and Liberal Democrat votes, the Tories will need the support of SNP and DUP MPs, and the Tories are reported to be negotiating with both parties.

Presumably Cameron thinks this gamble is worth the risk because his chances of winning the 2015 general election are otherwise very slim. It is more likely he will damage relationships with the Liberal Democrats without achieving his objective.