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

[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.