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

[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.