Boundary change would give Tories twice as many seats as Labour

BORIS JOHNSON would secure a 104seat majority under proposed boundary changes that could be introduced before the next election, an exclusive analysis reveals.

The Conservatives would have twice as many seats as Labour under the reforms which were put forward by the Boundary Commissions in 2018 for a slimmed-down 600-seat House of Commons.

The Tories would have 352 seats ( just 13 down from their 365 seats in the new Parliament) compared with Labour’s 174 (down 29 seats on their current showing), with the SNP in third place on 47 ( just two down).

The Liberal Democrats would drop another four seats to have just seven MPS, tied with Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

High-profile figures from both sides of the Commons would be at risk of seeing their seats disappear in such a boundary shake-up, including Stephen Kinnock; Priti Patel, the Home Secretary; Ian Blackford, the SNP’S Westminster leader; and Ian Lavery, the Labour Party chairman.

The analysis by pollsters Electoral Calculus plotted the results of the 2019 election onto the new electoral map created by redrawing the boundaries under the proposals put forward by the then prime minister David Cameron.

Under UK law, the size and shape of parliamentary boundaries must be periodically reviewed in order to keep up with changes in population size. Seats in the north of England and Wales are currently over-represented with fewer people per MP than those elsewhere.

Martin Baxter, Electoral Calculus’s founder, said reform of the electoral boundaries would be overdue by the end of the current Parliament, as it was 11 years since the last review. “It would be the correct thing to do constitutionally and the Conservatives will see that it won’t do them any harm,” he said.

Labour objected to the 2018 plan, claiming it was an “undemocratic power grab” by the Conservatives. They were backed by the Lib Dems, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Under the 2018 plan, other MPS who would see an influx of voters from other parties which, Electoral Calculus said, would also cost them their seats if the 2019 result was replicated include Margaret Beckett, the former Labour foreign secretary, and Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader.