The Left’s self-interest over boundary review
There is one word for Labour’s attempt to scupper the boundary review: gerrymandering. The present system that they seek to retain is so flawed, so indefensible, that the only reason they could have for doing so is self-interest. The Government proposes cutting the Commons down to size with constituencies that each contain roughly the same number of souls. It’s an idea that the Chartists have been pushing since the 1830s.
Of course there would be losers, including Tories. Boris Johnson’s seat would probably become more marginal. Popular MPS Priti Patel and James Cleverly would have to find a new place to stand. And David Davis would see Haltemprice and Howden cut in two. But there’s no denying that Labour would also suffer because for so long it has benefited from the uneven distribution of voters: the region with the largest number of “lost” seats in England would be the North East. Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency, Islington North, would vanish, placing him, possibly, in competition with his own shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, for the loyalty of Islington voters. Moderate Labour MPS fear de-selection battles.
Yet change is overdue. The current boundaries are based on data that goes back to 2000: it has failed to keep up with birth rates or the pace of both internal and external migration. Meanwhile, the British state has metastasised. The Lords is absurdly elephantine; even the Cabinet seems to have a minister for every human activity under the sun. Decades of steady growth have not correlated with an improvement in the quality of public services or much of a sense of government being responsive. MPS vary hugely in terms of quality and value for money – which is down to them as individuals – but the MP who represents, say, Arfon’s 41,367 voters has an obvious advantage over the representative of North West Cambridgeshire’s 93,221.
How does one square the fact that the Left has traditionally championed reforms such as proportional representation yet opposes this boundary review (which was kicked into the long grass by the Lib Dems when part of the Coalition)? The answer is that Left-wingers favour electoral arrangements that they calculate work to their advantage. Otherwise, they are happy to watch the system stagnate. The “democratic” in democratic socialism is far less important than the victory of socialism by hook or by crook.