UK parliamentary boundary review 2016-2018

[joevsimp]

Depending on what else changes in that part of town, this could end up with a selection battle between the two current Hackney MPs; Diane Abbot and Meg Hillier, although despite the media narrative,  the safe Labour seats in inner East London are overpopulated so a new seat may emerge further out for the latter.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's a fairly obvious seat to chop up but we need the details before there's much point in speculating.

[Kevinstat]

The England proposals are out.

http://www.bce2018.org.uk/

You can click on any region in "Search by Region" and it will take you to a map, and from there you can scroll and view constituencies throughout England.  You can also have the existing constituency boundary and/or "local authorities" (at the UA/borough level) superimposed, and even remove the proposed lines.  The report for the region you selected is linked to above the map (I just noticed that).

I don't know if the BCE was loath to divide wards or what but in West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire there's a lot of crossing borough lines, and two constituencies crossing the West Yorkshire-South Yorkshire boundary (one Kirklees-Barnsley (not the name, I haven't looked at those yet) and one Wakefield-Barnsley), and two crossing the West Yorkshire-North Yorkshire boundary (both Wakefield-Selby).

[Kevinstat]

And here's Wales, in English and Cymraeg (Welsh).

[YL]

The England proposals are out.

http://www.bce2018.org.uk/

You can click on any region in "Search by Region" and it will take you to a map, and from there you can scroll and view constituencies throughout England.  You can also have the existing constituency boundary and/or "local authorities" (at the UA/borough level) superimposed, and even remove the proposed lines.  The report for the region you selected is linked to above the map (I just noticed that).

I don't know if the BCE was loath to divide wards or what but in West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire there's a lot of crossing borough lines, and two constituencies crossing the West Yorkshire-South Yorkshire boundary (one Kirklees-Barnsley (not the name, I haven't looked at those yet) and one Wakefield-Barnsley), and two crossing the West Yorkshire-North Yorkshire boundary (both Wakefield-Selby).

They've really gone too far with this not dividing wards thing.  There's no way should a city have one of its seats disconnected by road, as "Sheffield Hallam & Stocksbridge" is, stretching round from Beauchief & Greenhill to Penistone East.  Indeed, with the exception of Stannington/Stocksbridge, none of the pairs of neighbouring wards in it really go together.  (They don't know what "Hallam" means either.)

But these proposals aren't just terrible because they won't divide wards.  The North East doesn't have particularly big wards in general, and the proposals there are utterly dreadful.  Middlesbrough is split into three, and they've even managed to split little Barnard Castle.  Ashington wouldn't be the direction I'd look to expand Berwick in, either.

[afleitch]

Labour's 'cryurbating' over being somehow being deliberately targeted, the list being from shock, last October and 'wait what do you mean they don't take into account voters who aren't registered' faux outrage makes me want to support this whole sh-tty exercise now.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

My favourite seat is probably Birmingham Ladywood: eastern Smethwick through to the Castle Vale estate on the far side of the city in one long bizarre loop!

Although special award for managing to not name the seat that includes the centre of Wolverhampton for Wolverhampton but for two smaller towns!!!!!!

[joevsimp]

My favourite seat is probably Birmingham Ladywood: eastern Smethwick through to the Castle Vale estate on the far side of the city in one long bizarre loop!

Although special award for managing to not name the seat that includes the centre of Wolverhampton for Wolverhampton but for two smaller towns!!!!!!

Yeah those are quite bad, but I like Chelmsley Wood and Solihul North, could end up as a five way marginal.  Whether Coventry West is a price worth paying for it is another matter.

[YL]

My favourite seat is probably Birmingham Ladywood: eastern Smethwick through to the Castle Vale estate on the far side of the city in one long bizarre loop!

Although special award for managing to not name the seat that includes the centre of Wolverhampton for Wolverhampton but for two smaller towns!!!!!!

At the moment I'm struggling to break a three way tie for worst constituency between Sheffield Hallam & Stocksbridge, Brum Ladywood and West Durham & Teesdale.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Last night's LIVE REACTIONS from yrs truly:

1. BOOM

2. The centre of Wolverhampton is in a seat called Wednesfield & Willenhall. Discuss.

3. They've gone with the doughnut solution to Telford. Actually makes a lot of sense given the rules.

4. Birmingham Edgbaston includes Sparkbrook and part of Smethwick haha.

5. Erdington loses Tyburn and gains Oscott and... er... Pheasey Park Farm from Walsall.

6. LADYWOOD!!!!

Eastern Smethwick to Castle Vale!!!!!!

7. Oh and Northfield is amusing: Longbridge to Moseley in one strip. Actually the whole of South Brum is a load of what American redistricting nerds would call 'bacon strips'

8. Selly Oak and Halesowen is quite something. As you can tell from the name. Yardley includes Hall Green but not Sheldon, which is bundled into 'Chelmsley Wood & Solihull North'.

9. NuL gains Kidsgrove but loses the villages at the west of the borough; looks like a hook around Stoke. Most of Stoke is put into two seats, the S.W. is bundled into an odd thing called West Staffordshire. Which includes the above villages from NuL.

10. Some... odd... boundaries in the Wakefield area.

11. Hampstead & Golders Green manages to not include the ward of Golders Green.

12. 'Willesden' randomly includes northernmost ward of Hammersmith.

13. ahahahahaha

Holborn & St Pancras does not include Holborn

14. West Durham & Teesdale is remarkable. Chopwell area to Barnard Castle (although not all of it! Only the B.C. West ward is included). Main town Consett, also includes Crook. Willington is included in Bishop Auckland. Tow Law is in Durham City.

15. Berwick & Ashington? Has to be a joke? No... it's real. jfc.

16. Sedgefield still exists and in a fairly recognisable form, but the name is gone: East Durham now. Feels pointed.

17. My God. The new Blaydon crosses the Tyne to take in Newburn and large tracts of West Newcastle.

18. Looking at the new Derby boundaries it would appear that in their excitement the commissioners confused 'East and West' for 'North and South'.

19. Hendon looks like a faintly dodgy attempt to pack as many Orthodox Jews as possible into one constituency.

20. Understanding that a crossing of the Tamar was hard to avoid and that any such crossing would be pitchfork bait, they've gone All In here: Bideford, Bude & Launceston. Let them eat pasties!

21. Those big rural seats wow. Did anyone have Llŷn to St Asaph? God.

22. Also Llanidoes in the same seat as Fishguard?!!!?

23. Beloved politicians Iain Duncan Smith and John McDonnell see their easily choppable seats not chopped.

[Cassius]

The carve up of Montgomeryshire looks awful (although I can't really see any way of making it look good without retaining it's present boundaries).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The carve up of Montgomeryshire looks awful (although I can't really see any way of making it look good without retaining it's present boundaries).

The seat is divided in half by the Berwyns. No roads worthy of the name cross the Berwyns; they form the starkest physical boundary in Britain south of Scotland.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Fyck it, let's have a go better names for the Welsh seats. Not bothering with Welsh versions; in most cases the translations are obvious anyway.

1. Menai
2. The trouble with the Eryri suggestion [as made by someone on voteuk] is that not many people live in that part of the seat. But then no name is really suitable: what a Godawful mess of a constituency. Gwynedd might work as a very desperate cop out but there are now obvious issues with that name. You could probably come up with all kinds of versions from the many districts in the seat, or we could just cheat and be all Australian and call it Lloyd George.
3. Costa Geriatrica. The official 'Colwyn & Conwy' works I suppose but actually it could easily be just Conwy, though that would risk confusion with the old seat of that name. Oh, how about Great Orme?
4. Flint
5. Deeside
6. Wrexham
7. Let us name this horror after its disuniting feature: Berwyn.
8. Similar issues to 2. Might as well just call it Powys.
9. Monmouth
10. Newport
11. Pontypool because its a nice name and a historic constituency. More accurate would be Pontypool & Cwmbran o/c.
12. Ebbw Vale & Abertillery
13. Merthyr Tydfil, which after all is still one of the largest towns in Wales.
14. Caerphilly
15. Pontypridd & Aberdare (or the other way round, whatever floats your boat)
16. Rhondda
17. Cardiff West
18. Cardiff North
19. Cardiff South East
20. Barry
21. Bridgend
22. Ogmore (or Aberavon-Ogmore; the name should be preserved but the idiotic boundaries here make it tricky)
23. Neath (or Aberavon-Neath; ibid)
24. Swansea East (or just Swansea, see 25)
25. The trouble here is that 'Gower' refers to a much larger area than often assumed. So 'Swansea West & Gower' is not ideal and Swansea West & Gower West is ugly. Gower South?
26. Llanelli or (see above) Llanelli & Gower North?
27. Carmarthen
28. Pembroke
29. Cardigan Bay

[IceAgeComing]

So unsurprisingly, its as bad as the last review then?

It'll be interesting to see what they do up here - the Scottish Boundary Commission has a very different attitude on ward splitting than the England and Wales one though, which I think will lead to a better map.  There certainly wasn't anything totally awful in the last one; other than the fact that the highland seats now have to a much bigger than they were which isn't particularly great for rural representation; especially since the effective Scottish quota is higher due to Orkney and Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar...

[Lachi]

Labour would most likely be demolished under this scenario...

[Slow Learner]

Labour would most likely be demolished under this scenario...

They'd be demolished under any other scenario.

[Gary J]

So unsurprisingly, its as bad as the last review then?

It'll be interesting to see what they do up here - the Scottish Boundary Commission has a very different attitude on ward splitting than the England and Wales one though, which I think will lead to a better map.  There certainly wasn't anything totally awful in the last one; other than the fact that the highland seats now have to a much bigger than they were which isn't particularly great for rural representation; especially since the effective Scottish quota is higher due to Orkney and Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar...

The electoral quota, for the 596 seats outside the island areas with special provisions, is calculated excluding the island area electorates; so the effective quota is the same throughout the United Kingdom. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/1/section/11
 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Although that's all large islands except Anglesey which is different because mumble mumble bridges or something.

[Harry Hayfield]

Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report has come up with the following estimates

Conservatives 320 seats (including the Speaker) -27 proportionally
Labour 203 seats -22 proportionally
Liberal Democrats 3 seats -4 proportionally
United Kingdom Independence Party 1 unchanged
Plaid Cymru 3 seats unchanged

The suggestion is that Caroline Lucas would not win Brighton North (Con 32%, Lab 31%, Green 27%)

[YL]

Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report has come up with the following estimates

Conservatives 320 seats (including the Speaker) -27 proportionally
Labour 203 seats -22 proportionally
Liberal Democrats 3 seats -4 proportionally
United Kingdom Independence Party 1 unchanged
Plaid Cymru 3 seats unchanged

The suggestion is that Caroline Lucas would not win Brighton North (Con 32%, Lab 31%, Green 27%)

Not exactly; the suggestion is that those were the figures in the wards making it up in 2015.  Had it existed, it's quite likely the distribution of Labour and Green votes would have been different and that Lucas would have won.

Similarly with the appalling Sheffield Hallam & Stocksbridge: it's notionally Labour, but it's likely that had it existed and Nick Clegg been the candidate that many Tory voters in the added wards would have voted tactically for him, and there are a fair number of Tories in Penistone East in particular, so I don't think you can be confident that Clegg would have lost.

[joevsimp]

I remember at the start of the zombie review there Was Brighton & Hove Central drawn almost perfectly for us,  and they projected it as labour somehow, having said that though, the Green voting parts of the city are divided almost perfectly against us this time. Hopefully Brighton Central and Hove will prove you much for the public beatings to tolerate and a more sensible map will somehow emerge ( STruggling to see how in so many places though)

[JerryArkansas]

Map of the Initial Proposal.  Uncompleted as of yet, but pretty far into it.

[dadge]

I've done some Google maps of my alternative proposals. In some cases the differences are because I'm not keen on what the Commissions have done (North Wales, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, ...) and in others the differences are just in order to show that other arrangements are possible.

England
Chilterns etc https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1G0GIqB9O1pfWl6vTlSyJ9FslDM8
S/W Yorkshire https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oUM7rKAHqMg_ZjQqJjmn2Mv223c
W Midlands https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1aEMzIFL4Ug0CpHE6gstYGmop8lU
North West https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=151J57rymQOIvBqyYkcXO-045fyU

Scotland https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1LemDO_4rTEcEchf0rTRIyypD6q8

Wales https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1ldktu_QYqMym-M9lREJFiCOuszE

[Gary J]

The Boundary Commission for England plans to submit its final report to the Secretary of State, in about one month, on or about 5th September 2018.

https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/towards-the-final-recommendations/

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[Antonio the Sixth]

Are they still reducing the number of seats to 600? Boy this is gonna suck.