Political Question

[andrewducker]

At the moment the House of Lords are debating the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.

I've heard numerous claims that this bill is incredibly unfair, and blatant gerrymandering by the Conservative Party.

Looking at the details, I'm feeling baffled. I can see a claim that the exemption for the three Scottish constituencies (Two Liberal Democrat, on Scottish National Party) are biased in their favour. But I can't see how a system whereby people are grouped together in what's going to be a massively arbitrary manner (each area must be within 5% of the national average, and are set up by independent bodies - the Boundary Commissions).

I don't really have a stake in this one - I'd just like someone to explain how this system would give an advantage to any one party. I can see that it could _remove_ advantage from a party if the old system with much less equal constituency sizes gave that party an advantage, but I'm totally failing to see how it's anything like gerrymandering.

Am I missing something obvious?

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

(Andy, this is partly in answer to your comment above too)

I just remember the year our high school of 300-odd had an unusually small first year intake and an unusually large fifth year departure. We had to lose a staff member, and consequently a whole subject, from our curriculum, because the staff:pupil ratio was now considered too high, even though some exceptions are made for smaller schools. Cry me a river, you might say, your Standard Grade classes were 25-strong at the largest, and mostly under 20. But being on an island we had no choice but to either take what we were given, or be sent to private school on the mainland (not really an option for most people). That meant French or German, no Spanish, no Latin, no Gaelic even until after I'd already left. That meant me having to choose between Music or Art because not enough people wanted to take both to justify having a second class not running at the same time. That meant not actually having scheduled classes for CSYS English because only two of us were doing it and the teacher was basically helping us as a favour in her spare time.

Arran's not exactly a targeted area as far as teacher quotas go. They never have trouble with class sizes, and they're one of the best schools in the district (or at least, they were ten years ago and I'd be surprised if much has changed). But kids on Arran don't care that kids in Ayr have it worse, and nor do their parents. They want their own situation to be made better. And they should be able to speak to their MP and lobby for that without being fobbed off and told "You don't know you're born - if you'll excuse me I have some real social problems to solve." They don't want an MP with divided loyalties or priorities. They want someone who represents them.

[andrewducker]

Nobody gets that.

There are rich and poor people in every area, people who do better out of things and people who do worse.

Nobody gets a representative for just their tiny bit of the world

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Of course, but there's still a critical mass in terms of diversity at which point an MP begins to be hit with strong voices from all sides wanting vastly different things at which point nothing is done anymore. A balance must be struck, or we might as well do away with constituencies altogether.

Edit: I'll add that if our eventual aim is a system of PR where we have individual constituencies represented by MPs followed by a part-list top-up to proportionality, a la AMS, then community rather than mathematically based constituencies is exactly what you want on a practical level.

[andrewducker]

Yup. In some ways I'd be happy to have a "Rural Party" which people could vote for if Rural votes were their thing. If we had a proper proportional system then they'd probably have at least a few percent of the representatives.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I take it your 'yup' is only in agreement with the second paragraph and not the first?

[andrewducker]

Yes :->

I see huge amounts of diversity in cities too. Take Glasgow where you have some of the richest streets in Scotland less than a hundred yards from some of the poorest ones, with life expectancies over a decade different to each other.

Of course, with multi-member STV this wouldn't be a problem either, because a larger area would vote in multiple representatives, one of whome would almost certainly be of the "I Like Sheep Party".

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Again, I think there's a practical difference in scale and type of priority clash in the correlation you're making between x urban dweller vs y urban dweller and rural vs urban.

(Edit: sorry, clarified)

[andrewducker]

I'm afraid I don't see why the rural/urban divide is harder for a representative to cope with than the rich/poor divide.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Well, for a start off you have both rich people and poor people in the country too. So that's twice as many groups to represent right there.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Urban and Rural richness and poorness (especially poorness) tend to be different though, and the issues that rural communities face are often different to the issues that urban communities face even if their economic demographics are similar.

Also people get attached to place-based identities and often urban people attach to cities and rural people, er, not so much. Here in Cambridge the City Council and the County Council are often at odds over things like transport infrastructure; and I don't think that's so much to do with being a Tory/LD split and more to do with being about the different needs of people living in different situations.