Representative Democracy?: Geography and the British Electoral System by Ron Johnston & Charles Pattie & David Rossiter

Author:Ron Johnston & Charles Pattie & David Rossiter [Johnston, Ron & Pattie, Charles & Rossiter, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Democracy, Campaigns & Elections, Political Ideologies, Political Science, Political Process, General
ISBN: 9781526139900
Google: KkATEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 53275851
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Although the four Commissions’ final proposals differed from their revised recommendations in detail, they had no effect on the likely electoral impact across Great Britain (Table 5.2). Their initial proposals were published after the 2015 general election, at which the Conservatives had gained a small majority overall but a 99-seat lead over Labour; the Liberal Democrats experienced a major decline in their number of MPs from the previous election (from 56 to just 8) and the SNP won all but three of Scotland’s 59 seats (compared to six in 2010). The Commissions’ initial recommendations – as at the previous, unfinished Review (Table 5.1) – favoured the Conservatives, increasing their majority over Labour to 116 seats in a smaller House of Commons, largely as a consequence of the equalisation of electorates.

Another general election was held, in June 2017, before the Commissions produced their revised and then final recommendations, both of which had the same electoral impact. The Conservatives lost ground at that election compared to 2015, lacking an overall majority and having a lead of 55 seats over Labour. But once again, if that election had been held in the new seats the Conservatives’ advantages would have been significantly enhanced: they would have achieved a small majority in the smaller House, and their lead over Labour would have been stretched from 55 to 71 seats.

Naming constituencies

One aspect of both the 2013 and 2018 reviews is worthy of comment - the length of constituency names. As discussed in Chapter 2, constituency names reflect the importance of place to many. These typically refer, in urban areas, to the main settlement and, where it is subdivided into several seats, either its geographical location (e.g. Glasgow East) or named sections (e.g. Ealing Acton and Central; Ealing Southall); in more rural areas the name is commonly either the county and some section of it (e.g. Mid Derbyshire; Derbyshire Dales) or one or more of its main settlements (e.g. St Ives; Truro and Falmouth). Residents and their representatives are keen to have their place contained within the constituency name, which can lead in some cases to names of considerable length. Two Scottish examples were mentioned in Chapter 2: East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow; and Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey; nine English constituencies have three places identified in their constituency names in the 2018 final proposals (including Harborough, Oadby and Wigston); the longest in Wales was Brecon, Radnor and Montgomery (Aberhonddu, Maesyfed a Threfaldwyn).

In creating constituencies with longer names than previously the Commissions were responding to representations from residents, political parties and MPs who wanted those names to reflect local identities in seats that covered several settlements; the then MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, for example, attended a public hearing in Bristol just to press that the current name be retained, rather than replaced by Plymouth South (he succeeded). In urban areas, the greater number of proposed constituencies containing wards from more than one local authority saw names identifying their separate parts, as with Ruislip, Northwood and

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