UK parliamentary by-elections 2014

[Gary J]

Chris Rand has a website called Queen Edith's Online, which has something about the origin of the name.

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http://queen-ediths.co.uk/why-is-this-area-of-cambridge-called-queen-ediths/

[Gary J]

In the days when rotten boroughs abounded, the House of Commons sometimes noticed particularly outrageous examples and punished them by not issuing a writ for a by-election. This left a seat vacant for the rest of a Parliament. The disappointed electors were thus cheated of the opportunity to freely vote for the highest bidder, one more time. Nineteenth century spoilsports were sometimes so outraged that they disenfranchised the borough (see the sad history of Grampound in Cornwall, whose two seats were transferred to Yorkshire). It should be noted that the borough would still be represented as part of a county constituency, when its individual representation disappeared, but there would be fewer opportunities to make a corrupt profit.

However punishing a corrupt constituency is not really something to be done in a modern democracy. Nowadays it would just be a squalid party game to leave innocent electors without an MP.

[Gary J]

Extract from the Wikipedia article on White van man.

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