Black and White Thinking

Thus spake a member of the Labour Party's shadow cabinet:

"I am going to be put in the impossible position next May of campaigning to remove the Liberal Democrats on my local council three days of the week, and then join forces with the same Liberal Democrats to call for a change in the voting system for the Commons for the remaining days of the week. It is totally incoherent."

Frankly, if you can't cope with the idea that you can be opposed to people on some topics, and agree with them on others then you have no business in politics, and can fuck right off back to the 18th century.

I'd like an explanation

So far as I understand it, the current division of voting districts in the UK is unfair.  Labour gets a boost such that it will always get more seats than the Conservatives would given the same number of votes.

There's a bill going through at the moment which will reduce the number of MPs to 600 and alter the size of distrcits to be more even.

The first bit I'm leaving to one side for the moment - it's the resizing bit that seems to be causing the most fuss.

Labour are decrying it as gerrymandering.  And I can see that it _could_ be used that way.  But as no statement has been made about what the new districts will be, I can't see how on earth they can come to the conclusion that they will be slanted against them.

I don't understand how there can be an argument against voting districts being of (roughly) equal size, in the interests of fairness.  Can anyone enlighten me?

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