Jerry’s gerrymandering

IF I told you that when I was the Tory MP for Cheadle, Cheshire (1987-2001) I had to attract almost 30,000 votes to win, while in the next-door Labour constituency of Wythenshawe, the MP needed about 20,000 to win, would you think that was true? It was, in more seats than mine.

The reason was simple. The number of voters in many Tory seats was way more than in Labour-held ones. At one time, these anomalies were automatically rectified by the independent Boundary Commission, about every 10 years, who changed constituency boundaries to take into account movements of people from one area to another. Their final recommendations were usually automatically accepted. This kept the numbers of electors in each constituency roughly the same.

The last (delayed) UK boundary change was in 2000, although the outcome was not sufficient to rectify the disadvantage we Tories faced. When Cameron’s coalition with the Lib Dems won in 2010, he tried to implement the changes. The Lib Dems blocked this as the price of their support. The result was that the UK now has the most outdated constituency boundaries ever. The Tories should have at least 40 seats more than they can currently win.

Theresa May is trying to implement the recommended changes again. Jeremy Corbyn will oppose them. He claims he can’t support changes “designed to benefit the Tories”, although he is happy to oppose them to save his own seat, which would disappear. The man is a disgrace. Fixing boundaries to your own advantage is called gerrymandering. In Jerry’s case, the description couldn’t be more apt, now could it?