A bill that deserves trimming

Chris

>Exceptions are being made for Liberal Democrat held Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles.

Don't be so bloody stupid. Where do you propose to yoke Orkney and Shetland to to make a logical constituency? (Question asked by a Shetland resident who would be ecstatic if Shetlanders and Orcadians stopped being so stupid as to vote Liberal because it starts with an 'L'.)

TGF UKIP

The One Nation gang have always been great advocates of "fudge and mudge" of which this absurdity of a governement is a fine working example.

The great irony is that we now have a leader of the Conservative Party whose dearest political wish is, self-evidently, never to see the Conservative party governing Britain alone again in his lifetime.

The great idiocy, of course, is that so many of the Tory Parliamentary Party are quite happy to accomodate him in his wish.

If they aren't, they will ensure, in committee, that the referendum is not held on 5th May 2011.

Realist

TGF: Well, maybe if your MPs in Parliament could do.... oh wait. You haven't got any have you.

TrevorsDen

long and rambling post.

Is it not right to have equal (fair) constituencies? Yes of course. How is this gerrymandering? Labour have been the beneficiaries of 13 years of gerrymandering.

Was the proposal to offer a referendum on AV not in the coalition agreement and agreed virtually unanimously by both party memberships?

So ?

And dear dear UKIP - hah what a fool and he does not even realise it.
If YOU voted conservative Mr UKIP we would not have a coalition now, HE himself and his fatuous party are responsible for not giving a Tory majority. He goes out of his way to split the Right vote and then complains about a coalition with the LibDems. What a twerp.

m wood

AV could put a premium on negative/smear campaigning. Consider the case where sitting MP A has a narrow margin over B in a constituency where say, 5 are standing. It will be in B's interest to slag off A as much as he can so that supporters of other candidates put A at the bottom of their preferences. I sure that Dirty Tricks depts (you know who), will excel at that.

Verity

Who put David Cameron into power? This man is clearly not of the intellectual stature to be other than a middle manager with no further ambitions. His experience in the real world appears to have been a toy job at Carlton TV got for him by a friend of the family.

Who had enough power in the Conservative Party to engineer this overly-ambitious, sly (although not cleverly sly ... for example, he thought passing himself off as "shirtsleeves Dave" would work ...) individual into Leader of the Conservative Party?

And who managed to keep him in that position for four and a half years, despite his stunning inadequacies and failures? And why?

We know why Davie Dim's in it. He wants to go to Brussels.

But what's in it for the individual/s who engineered this grotesquerie?

Who engineered the accession of this

Rebel Saint

TGF UKIP said "The great irony is that we now have a leader of the Conservative Party whose dearest political wish is, self-evidently, never to see the Conservative party governing Britain alone again in his lifetime."

So what? A government is meant to lead in the COUNTRIES interest, not in the interest of their party. If what you say is true, then I applaud Mr Cameron for it.

DavidDP

Mr Blackburn,

I'm afraid it's quite clear that the Government is doing the right thing. The most accurate barometer of these things, the disagreement of Verity and TGF, quite clearly points to this.

DavidDP

"David Davis made several adroit interjections"

Well, yes, if the bill being discussed was to introduce AV. It isn't- it's to have a referendum on it.

And you have criticised the practical deviations from the basic equal size principle, while praising Davis for complaining about being unable to appeal impractical changes.

Victor Southern

OK - the voters are to be offered a free choice on whether they want AV or not. Some MPs feel they should not be offered that choice. Those MPs are wrong - it is called direct democracy. There is no bill in the Parliament that provides for our voting system to be changed by fiat. It can only be changed by popular acclaim. Opponents need only say "Australia".

Secondly, all or any are free to oppose the AV principle when the referendum comes along. That is our and their democratic voice.

Then, thirdly we come to an obscure MP's point that he would have to travel further witin his constituency. That is an assumption only as he cannot know what a boundary Commisssion will decide. If his constituency is enlarged then more points will have to available surgeries - there will be no need for his constituents to travel further to see him; he should travel to where they are.

Lastly, the talk about holding it together with normal elections. Why not? It is cheaper and we will see a bigger turnout. The argument that it will enable Labour to get more of its vote out escapes me. Presumably they expect their voters to vote aganst AV. Only the LibDems can suffer that way.

AV will be defeated anyway. Next, House of Lords reform.

Maggie

Are you sure this is true? I've been listening to the radio since 6.30 this morning and no-one's mentioned it yet. In fact they are so short of news they've had to spend the morning broadcasting garbage.

AndyLeeds

There is no intellectual argument for not having constituencies of a roughly equal size. Orkney has about 32000 electors. In other words it is less than half the size of an English seat, the smallest of which is Wirral West with 56000. Most seats ought to be 100000 electors. And as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved assemblies (England is discriminated against) should have larger seats - half as big again - as England unless and until the English people are treated in the same way as those in other parts of the UK. Reforming constituency sizes is far more important than AV which is a rotten system and probably worse than FPTP.

Chris lancashire

The principle of even-sized constituencies such that each vote is given equal weight seems to me to be entirely right. Too much to hope that this Bill will scrap postal voting on demand and replace it with the previous system where they are granted only on the basis of sickness or absence from the country.
My vote in my constituency continues to be devalued by postal voting fraud.

The Laughing Cavalier

Peter Hain accusing another party of gerrymandering would be funny if it were not so sad. His party engineered the electoral system so that it benefited from fraudulent by postal votes and the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries and sizes.

John Nurick

Widely unequal constituency populations are a clear affront to democracy. Equalising constituency populations requires frequent boundary changes that decouple constituency boundaries from communities and administrative units.

Solution: draw boundaries that make sense in terms of communities, administration, history, even if populations vary by a ratio of 3:1 or so. Then weight each MP's vote in the Commons by the number of people they represent. Simples!

davidk

It's completely laughable when the Isle of Wight will be welded to some part of mainland Britain to create a parliamentary seat that fits in with the changes, whilst the Limp Dem fiefdoms in Scotland remain unscathed.

That bird isn't going to fly, I'm afraid.

Alexander

What was interesting about the Australian elections was to see that their electorates are roughly about 100,000 and many are larger than the whole of the UK. If the Australian system was used in the UK we would have roughly 360 MPs - not the proposed 600.

Seems to me the issues are about "jobs for the boys" - MPs don't like it because they will lose their jobs!

ROJ

"Simon Hart, Tory MP for West Carmarthen and South Pembrokeshire and ostensibly on the party's left, noted that his constituency would grow geographically. It currently takes an hour and a half to drive across it; constituents can expect to do it in two hours in future."

What's his point - that constituencies should be of equal geographic area? And re Orkney & Shetland - perhaps Mr. Hart should try driving across that one.

denis cooper

I've said before that this Bill should have been two separate Bills.

I understand the political guile behind combining provisions about AV with provisions about restructuring parliamentary constituencies, but the fact is that a move from FPTP to AV is in no way dependent on or linked to a restructuring the constituencies, or vice versa.

The two would be linked if it was proposed to move from FPTP to a proper system of PR such as STV, which requires multi-member constituencies, but AV is basically an improved version of FPTP still with single member constituencies, and so there is no connection at all between the provisions in Part 1 of the Bill and those in Part 2.

We know that must be the case, because if the public rejected AV in the referendum then the whole of Part 1 would become a dead letter but without in any way affecting any of the provisions in Part 2. There would be no further Bill to amend Part 2 in the light of the "no" vote in the referendum; it would stand exactly as it was whether the AV vote was "yes" or "no".

So what happens when these two separate issues are lumped together as if they were one issue? Well, look at the article and the comments here, and look at the Commons debate, and see how it becomes impossible to have a coherent, rational debate about either issue.

I've also said from the start that despite the extra cost the AV referendum should not be held on the same day that local and regional elections are held in some parts of the country, and primarily for the same kind of reason - that it will be impossible to have a coherent, rational public debate about the referendum issue, which should be dealt with on a cross-party, non party basis, at the same time as partisan debates are being held about all kinds of other issues for the elections.

From July 2nd:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6116563/three-questions-about-the-av-referendum.thtml

"Has the Electoral Commission been consulted on this?

As I recall they've argued in the past that referendums should not be combined with elections, even though it would be simpler and slightly cheaper to do so.

I tend to agree with that, because with two campaigns running in parallel up to the same polling day the result of the referendum may be influenced by whatever happens in the election campaign, just as much as by whatever happens in the referendum campaign - which would partially defeat the object of holding a separate referendum on a specific issue."

And I've repeatedly pointed out what should be obvious, that equalisation of parliamentary constituencies does not require any change in their number. Once again the waters are being deliberately muddied by combining two separate issues:

1. How many constituencies should there be?

2. How much weight should be given to numerical equality of the constituencies, compared to other factors such as geographical constraints and the sense of community among each electorate?

This was supposed to be the era of "new politics" but it's already indistinguishable from the same old politics, with party politicians and their retinues of supporters deliberately setting out to confuse and mislead the public in the hope of gaining some narrow party political advantage irrespective of the harm being done to the country as a whole.

Ronnie

'Simon Hart, Tory MP for West Carmarthen and South Pembrokeshire and ostensibly on the party's left, noted that his constituency would grow geographically. It currently takes an hour and a half to drive across it; constituents can expect to do it in two hours in future. Hart’s scenario will be reciprocated across Tory dominated rural England and Wales. It bodes badly for attendance at MPs’ surgeries and turnout, as well as Conservative chances at general elections.'

Honestly! Is that it? Utter tripe.

And as for Verity's rant. What's your point dear?

Verity

Ronnie writes: And as for Verity's rant. What's your point dear?

Men who try to patronise women they don't know with dismissive endearments looks so weak and needy.

There should have been a comma before "dear", darling.

Verity

I see Nero Zero is opening and closing his little mouth at what looks like a formal press conference in his shirt sleeves again.

(Thanks to Frank P for the sobriquet.)

Victor Southern

News for you Verity - you are not smarter then Cameron or Osborne and they do not suffer from monomania as you do. Also they escape being as boring as your posts by showing some original thoughts. You have just the one thought repeated 1000 times.

Minnie Ovens

This bill is symbolic of the shallowness and lack of foresight of Westminster in general and a prime minister, in specific, who seems enthusiastic in following as Tony Blair's clone in demolishing yet another major political party.
When will these dreadful persons stop attempting to devise methods of continuing to cheat on expenses while ignoring the fact that it is best to leave alone a system which has developed from the ground up over two thousand years to a level of honour and altruism which saw us safely through the first half of a very uncertain 19th Century, to fighting and winning two world wars.
Since 1945 Westminster, abetted ably by Whitehall, has dismantled every good aspect of our nation's infrastructure, screaming "progress" and "change".
In fact any good in Britain has been brought about by private enterprise. Those controlled by the Government; education, health, social services and defence, have been run into the ground, getting worse as more money (except for defence) was thrown at them.
You may not agree with my thoughts but I know that to be British in the fifties and, indeed, the sixties was something of which to be proud. There was still honour, a sense of belonging and place, in a reasonably harmoneous society.
I will not make any comments as to my opinion of it now. It hurts too much.

Ronnie

Verity.

My knees are weak and I am needy, needy for something better from you than these irrelevant and pointless rants against Cameron. Bobby Jindal's smile made more analytical sense.

You're playing the punctuation card again. schoolmarmish and deadly. Thwack!

Verity

Ronnie - I adore Bobby Jindsal and wanted him to run for President in 2012, but he has to stay back and oversee cleaning up LA from the oil spill, and also from the years of corruption under Governor Blanco and her predecessors.

I would love to see a Palin-Jindal ticket! One from Alaska and the other from 6,000 miles away in LA. It would be a truly national ticket. (Neither of them from the corrupt NE.)

Fergus Pickering

I don't give a fart for AV. What matters is equalizing the constituencies. If Cameron gets that through all will be well. I doubt the British will vote for AV.

Paddy

Labour would know all about 'gerrymandering'

Verity: It's so obvious you fancy Dave. Go on admit it. A yes or no will do.

Ronnie

Verity.

We'll see, I think the GOP running order may become clearer after November and, of course, a Jindal/Palin ticket would be very appealing to many conservatives. I know you are a strong supporter of both.

However, I think that Palin may have difficulty in finding someone to share the ticket with. Many would feel that she is simply too loud and spontaneous (uncontrollable) and that they would be crowded out in the campaign. I think that many strategists and advisors will be telling their guy to keep away from her.

denis cooper

Fergus Pickering -

Unequal constituencies deprived the Tories of maybe 6 seats, at most - trivial, really.

In contrast the lack of proportionality deprived the Liberal Democrats of about 90 seats.