A surfeit of MPS

Last week, the final recommendations of the UK Boundary Commissions were presented to the Government and are due to be laid before MPS today. These reviews of parliamentary constituencies always have the capacity to sow political discord, since they make some seats safer, some more vulnerable and some disappear.

This particular process, however, is of a different order of magnitude. The commissions have been beavering away not merely to equalise the number of voters in each constituency but to cut the number of seats in the Commons from 650 to 600. As a result, many MPS will see their constituencies merge. There will not be room for them all. Yet, despite her travails, Theresa May is determined to push ahead with the plans, and she is right to do so.

Labour objects to what it calls Tory gerrymandering designed to influence the outcome of the next general election. Yet part of the exercise is intended to remove the bias that currently favours Labour, whose constituencies are mostly smaller than Tory seats. Brexiteers are joining the complaints because some of their most prominent champions, including Boris Johnson and David Davis, will see their seats abolished or turned into wafer-thin marginals. Is this a No 10 plot to undermine them? No. The legislation was passed under the Coalition and was partly justified on grounds of reducing the cost of politics.

In any case, the chances of the new boundaries being agreed are slim. Labour says it objects not to the equalisation of voter numbers but to the cut in seats. Yet a chamber of 600 MPS is large enough and only a few legislatures in the world are bigger. It would be nice to think that the work of the commissions has not been in vain.