My analysis of this week's by-elections and why ward-splitting is necessary in the 2018 Boundary Review

Readers, the results of this week's local by-elections featuring Green Party candidates are as follows:

(20/9/16):

Cardiff UA, Plasnewydd: Liberal Democrats 1258 (48.1%, +14.4%), Labour 910 (34.8%, -2.5%), Plaid Cymru 177 (6.8%, -3.6%), Conservative 115 (4.4%, -0.5%), Green 93 (3.6%, -10.2%), UKIP 62 (2.4%).

(22/9/16):

Cherwell DC, Adderbury, Bloxham & Bodicote: Con 1015 (57.4%, +7.0%), Lab 286 (16.2%, +0%), Green 278 (15.5%, -3.7%), Lib Dem 189 (10.7%, -3.3%).

Gateshead MBC, Chopwell & Rowlands Gill: Lab 1066 (59.1%, -3.7%), UKIP 282 (15.6%, +1.3%), Lib Dem 221 (12.3%, +7.9%), Con 156 (8.6%, -2.3%), Green 79 (4.4%, -3.2%).

North Lanarkshire UA, Coatbridge North & Glenboig (1st preference votes): Lab 1350 (41.7%, -11.3%), SNP 1261 (39.0%, +8.2%), Con 366 (11.3%, +5.3%), Green 195 (6.0%), UKIP 63 (1.9%). Labour gain from SNP.

Suffolk CC, Hadleigh: Lib Dem 642 (36.2%, +12.8%), Con 460 (25.9%, -5.6%), Lab 397 (22.4%, +5.8%), UKIP 204 (11.5%, -11.3%), Green 70 (3.9%, -0.9%).

Local by-elections these may be, they had some notable consequences-the Liberal Democrats' gain of the rural Hadleigh ward caused the Conservatives to lose overall control of Suffolk County Council, and a Labour gain of the reliably Conservative Christchurch ward in Cockermouth, Cumbria, gained Labour overall control of Allerdale council (where Cockermouth is situated in) with a majority of 2.

I am pleased that our candidate for the Witney by-election on 20th October will be Larry Sanders, brother of US Senator Bernie Sanders and 2015 candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon. I wish Larry the very best, even if it looks very unlikely indeed that the Conservatives will lose the Witney by-election.

I would like to hint on the subject of the 2018 Boundary Review for Parliamentary Constituencies that ward splitting is necessary in some places, for many reasons:

1. Keeping communities together is vital when creating any new constituency, especially if those communities are relatively small.
2. There is no need to combine cities with hinterland that has no real connection that city (e.g. 'Halesowen & Birmingham Selly Oak', a 'Blaydon' constituency containing part of Ponteland)
3. Some large city wards already contain more than one community anyway e.g. Otley & Yeadon in Leeds, Lozells & East Handsworth in Birmingham, and Moulsecoomb & Bevendean in Brighton & Hove. Therefore to create coherent constituencies that are within quota, ward-splitting should be acceptable when it is convenient to do so and where the ward to be split contains more than one distinct parish/community.
4. The limited range for manoeuvre in electorate terms (71,030 to 78,507, giving a range of 7,477; some inner-city wards have electorates at least 1 1/2 times that range) will necessitate it in the larger cities and in some London boroughs.

As long as the wards need to be split are split carefully, and as long as it is not done indiscriminately, I believe it will work out, particularly in Leeds and Birmingham which have the largest average ward size in electorate terms in the whole of England.

Comments

  1. Andi26 September 2016 at 09:59

    Spot on! There will be a punch up over Halesowen (Black Country) being lumped in with 3 Birmingham suburbs. Even Selly Oak and Bartley Green being combined is really strange - both are in Birmingham but put together completely arbitrarily. There's little community overlap between these two areas.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more

On the Spanish regional elections of 2023-a warning for progressives

The Spanish regional elections of 2023, especially those in the "Empty Spain" regions far west of the federal capital of Madrid and prosperous yet famously rebellious Catalonia, resulted in a sharp shift towards conservatism and conservative populism. Both Partido Popular (PP, Spain's equivalent of the Conservatives) and Vox (the Spanish equivalent of Reform UK/UKIP) made sweeping gains in all regions, notably taking overall control in Madrid (normally an impossible feat under Spain's PR system), more than doubling their seat total in Valencia to top the poll there, and wresting control of Asturias, La Rioja, and Cantabria from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Spain's equivalent of Labour) and the Cantabrian Regionalist Party respectively. Under the tenure of Pedro Sanchez, the current PSOE-Podemos coalition is floundering and has not done much to ensure Spain's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic since the last restrictions ended in 2021, and P
Read more