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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Corbyn and the boundary review: not the disaster for LAB th
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Corbyn and the boundary review: not the disaster for LAB that it is but an opportunity for the hard left
The only question from a Labour perspective about the result of the Parliamentary constituency review for England and Wales is just how bad it will be for the party. The most optimistic prognosis I saw was from Paul Waugh in the Huffington Post, who reported that under the new boundaries the Tories would lose 17 seats and Labour would lose 23.
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https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/78954/labour-mps-condemn-hit-list-leaked-jeremy-corbyn
After WWII the Gestapo hit list of people they would have rounded up and shot had they occupied Britain was discovered. As well as leading politicians, communists and Trades Union officials were 'sexual deviants' (sic) like Noel Coward.....as he remarked 'To think, the people one would have been seen dead with.....'
http://www.wsj.com/articles/many-presidential-swing-states-lag-behind-in-income-gains-1473912060
Worth a bet on Trump winning the Electoral College on a minority of the popular vote?
Eight of the swing states are at -3% or worse. A further two have shown negative wage growth and New Hampshire is at +0.2%, or essentially flat, since 2008. Only Colorado and Iowa show significant (but still pathetic) wage growth of 1.5% and 1.9%
To call this a Tory stitch-up - you (and Owen Jones) really need evidence that the independent Boundary Commission has acted without independence. The fact Labour need to do well in England and Wales because of their problems in Scotland are also not valid reasons for retaining out-of-date boundaries.
By all means point out if the review has been conducted unfairly - but the public will see through a naked attempt to protect Labour's position despite their obvious declining popularity with the electorate.
Does Own Jones realise what a hypocrite he is? I don't remember Labour complaining as they tried to re-write the constitution and the electoral system to entrench Labour government in Scotland for ever.
Setting aside the PR discussion, this isn't an attempt to stitch up anything
1. Register not population - like it has been done since universal suffrage was introduced
2. Individual Registration - asking people to register themselves is not onerous and introduces an important fraud protection measure
3. "The missing 2 million" - you need a cut off somewhere, but (a) delaying the process by a year would mean it is unlikely the boundary review would be completed before 2020; and (b) in any event the effect will wash out in the next boundary review so hardly "for ever"
4. The 5% criteria - that's just trying to make constituencies roughly equal. That's not a priori unfair, although it might be seen as "unfair" to level the playing field
5. Regular boundary reviews - probably a net benefit to the Tories, but can you really argue that updating boundaries every 5 years is a bad thing?
6. Reduction to 600 MPs - hardly relevant to anything; the only impact is that it makes the boundary review more comprehensive. Not really a matter of a "stitch up" though
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37369917
The Boundary changes were not implemented to enable Labour’s hard left to purge the undesirable element of their MPs, that’s just a bonus feature.
1. I'd change it to +/- 10%, as I'd rather keep towns intact as political entities where possible, and 5% is too tight. (It's worth remembering that there was a difference of 3x between the largest and smallest constituencies last time, so this is a pretty major improvement.)
2. If get rid of geographical exemptions. Why should Orkney and Shetland be exempt?
3. I'd stay at 650 seats. Why? Because the reduction in seat sizes disproportionately affects the smaller parties, and I think it's wrong that ukip and the libdems could garner a quarter of the vote between them, but less than 1% of the seats.
It should also be noted that Corbyn and the likes of Owen Jones do not believe in Parliamentary socialism - more precisely, they don't think they can deliver it since none of their predecessor could.
Hypocrites R Us
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/jenny-hjul/285579/lets-do-the-time-warp-again/
The cacophony of wailing that has followed the publication of the English and Welsh reviews has also contained many other spurious justifications for doing nothing, including...
* The fact that it takes fewer electors overall to vote in every Tory MP, compared to every Labour MP (despite the fact that this situation was reversed up until 2015, and I don't recall many of the Outraged of Hampstead Heath types lamenting the supposed unfairness of the system to the Conservatives at the time)
* Representation for Wales being slashed "as no account is taken of the asymmetric needs of the Union" (Tristram Hunt moaning in the Graun, having neglected to mention that Scotland also used to be over-represented in the Commons but had that privilege taken away as a quid pro quo for gaining a powerful law-making Parliament - a precedent established by a Labour Government, of course)
* The suggestion that boundary change will make Parliament less representative and effective, because it will provide a pretext for Momentum to purge moderate Labour MPs (as if the need to police a civil war on the British Left took precedence over the imperative to reform the increasingly outdated and crooked distribution of Parliamentary representation)
I also concur that the hyperventilation over the prospect of indefinite Conservative rule is unnecessary. Nature abhors a vacuum. If Labour ceases permanently to be credible as the main Opposition them something will, eventually, take its place - just as Labour supplanted the Liberals a hundred years ago.
If you are outraged by this, take a look at Wales. 34 % of the vote was enough for Labour to get almost half the seats (29 out of 60) in the Welsh Assembly.
As so often, parties are only outraged by the unfairness of it all when it affects them.
Synthetic outrage from Owen and Joff.
As for Labour stitch-ups - I am not sure there ever was one in Scotland. The electoral system introduced there did not create Labour majorities, at a time when Labour was the predominant force in the country. Its effect seems to have been that in order to get a majority in the Scottish Parliament you need to pretty much get a majority of the votes. That seems fair to me.
More broadly, I agree that Labour saw FPTP and the current boundaries as working to their advantage and so cynically did nothing about either. That was wrong and is indefensible. That, though, is no reason to persist with a system that ensures the make up of the House of Commons does not reflect the votes cast in a general election.
But, in the previous 16,542 posts, you have not mentioned it.
Joff (& Nick Palmer) may well be genuine in their desire for electoral reform, but the Labour Party as a whole is not.
600 MPs for 65m people is a lot, arguably too many. The House of Congress manages with 435 for over 324m. The argument that this is going to make these unqualified and frequently unskilled social workers too busy is risible. The fact that FPTP produces majorities for the largest party is a feature, not a bug. It leads to stronger governments.
There is always room for discussion, negotiation and debate on the EC's proposals where they are thought to break up communities. The process allows for this and this is what Labour should be concentrating its efforts on.
Dictatorships often lead to very strong governments. But then so do PR systems in democracies.
http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/donald-trump-dr-oz-medical-records-1201860476/
What PR seems to lead to is governments without a meaningful opposition. So in Germany we have the grand coalition of the 2 major parties to keep out undesirables. Would Merkel have made such terrible mistakes in respect of immigration policy with a proper opposition breathing down her neck? Who knows but I suspect not.
Lord Corbyn of Pointless Causes would be an ideal name....
Mind you, after the Court I was in yesterday requiring judges to be elected may not be the worst idea....
(granted, even a stopped clock tells the right tie twice a day)
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/religion/2016/09/tom-holland-why-i-was-wrong-about-christianity
It's the only 35 % voted for the Tories so they don't have a mandate argument while conveniently ignoring the fact that Blair won No10 with even less %. The same argument that unless their opponents get 50% plus one then they don't have the popular mandate to govern conveniently forgetting Labour never get this either. These points have been made on this site quite regularly but never when Labour are in power, FPTP is unfair but only when Labour are in opposition of course ......odd that.
It's always said that Tories think they have a God given right to govern. Labour put that perceived right into practice on a daily basis. Fortunately they aren't going to govern anytime soon if ever at all.
As for Jez's 2 million non registered voters , if you can't be bothered to even register to vote then you really don't deserve it.
The two million are registered voters.
I hope not, but the hubris of many Tory supporters seems to me to be increasingly poorly founded.
(Though STV in multimember constituencies would be better still).
However, my piece is not about that!
Today the Tories have 100% of the power.
Because they have 50% of the seats
Because they got 37% support in an election of those that turned out
In total they were supported by 24% of the electorate.
Libya was like other interventions, we won the war and lost the peace. I am not sure anything else ws possible.
Similarly the issue of it using the register in place when the process started is the normal procedure and using the post referendum register would mean starting all over again and delaying it by 18 months to two years meaning that the out of date and very favourable to Labour with lots of small inner city constituencies register would have to be used.
Best to leave dressing up political advantage seeking as rightous sanctimonius concern at things not being to queensbury rules to the lib dems who rather excel in it.
This comes as no surprise to me. It looks like she has learnt little in the last 14 years.
She needs to. Fast.
https://twitter.com/markdiffley1/status/776291940895784960
Not singing anymore? The Times on Labour's rather lengthy coach stop (today in 1981). https://t.co/9f0WBltxKR
New PM has a rough PMQ after some idiot leaks a half finished policy which then has to be rushed out.
What we do know now is she is not a wet zhe is not one of the public school classes, she is a weekly churchgoing Christian and is on the socially conservative dry side of the party the like of which we have not seen in power since 1990 and social liberals, socialists, luvvies and media types like it not one bit
And this has happened just after the referendum which was to enable Cameron to destroy the right of the party for once and all.
Surprised the honeymoon lasted this long
So what gives? Well, it turns out that a pair of SNP MPs have complained to STV about Daisley’s writing and that, apparently taking note of this, STV have reportedly chosen to clip his wings.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/now-snp-power-skin-seems-thinned/
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/making-misogyny-crime-sleep-walking-tyranny/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37369786
How about doing your day job hen?
Hasn't May resigned yet?
Miss Plato, I saw that. It's indefensible to have misogyny as a crime but not misandry, before even getting to the problem of policing manners.
Still, it's easier than ruffling feathers by catching rape gangs, I suppose.
Sky News
No British team has won this many gold medals at a Paralympics since Seoul 1988 - and there are four more days of action to come
Paralympics GB's astounding momentum at the Rio Games shows no sign of slowing down, with the team winning nine gold medals on the seventh day of the competition
Now 43. 24. 28. Lying second in the table behind China.
In the wake of the UK voting to leave the EU against the wishes of the majority of Scots, our new poll for STV News suggests that Brexit has not caused an upsurge in support for either a second independence referendum being held, or for supporters of independence carrying the day in the event of a second vote being held.
Among those who expressed a voting preference and who would be very likely or certain to vote in an immediate referendum, 48% said they would support independence while 52% would back Scotland remaining in the UK.
And support for indyref2 being held in the next two years has fallen from 48% in our last STV News poll before the Brexit vote in June, to 41% now. Over the same period, opposition to such a move has grown to 54%, 10 points higher than the recorded in June. Unsurprisingly, there are deep divisions on this issue, with 84% of ‘Yes’ voters supporting indyref2 while 92% of ‘No’ voters oppose the idea.
Elsewhere there has been a significant shift in the public perceptions of the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the leader of the main opposition party, Conservative leader Ruth Davidson. Satisfaction in the job being done by the First Minister has fallen by 12-points from April to stand at 54% now. Meanwhile satisfaction in the job being done by Ruth Davidson has risen by 8-points to 55%. In terms of net satisfaction ratings (satisfaction scores minus dissatisfaction scores), Ruth Davidson now stands at +31% compared to Nicola Sturgeon’s +14%.
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3781/Brexit-does-not-trigger-significant-increase-in-support-for-independence.aspx
I can understand why Sturgeon's ratings are slipping. you can't keep Scotland 'on the brink' of another referendum for too long. Either she has to call one, or the calls for her and the SNP to clarify what they're doing are going to get louder.
For all the bluster post-brexit vote, it certainly appears they are indeed frit.
Oh, but that's somehow different... lol.
Did BREXIT vote result change your mind on Independence:
Yes: 15
No: 79
Of the 15% who said 'Yes' BREXIT had changed their mind, the shift was 55:45 in favour of Independence.......
'But...it seems a lot more partisan to leave a system out of date because it benefits Labour. Fair enough your disclosure at the top of the article that you support PR - but given the public doesn't, then we need a boundary review to update the constituencies.
To call this a Tory stitch-up - you (and Owen Jones) really need evidence that the independent Boundary Commission has acted without independence. The fact Labour need to do well in England and Wales because of their problems in Scotland are also not valid reasons for retaining out-of-date boundaries.'
Spot on, no whinging from Joff & co when unequal constituency sizes gave Labour an advantage.