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Post by gwynthegriff on Aug 28, 2018 10:31:23 GMT
I feel like members of my party suggesting cross-Solent constituencies should be minded that having spoken to members on the Island, the party's fall from competitive to completely irrelevant post-2015 was as much to do with the coalition as it was to do with having a candidate that year with a Southampton address on the ballot paper. The separation of the Island from the mainland when drawing up constituencies is down to community as much as it is geography. Comparisons to the distance between Orkney and Shetland are all well and good, but separating those two are different in that the resulting discrepancies in electorates would be much greater than that of one or two IoW constituencies. And yet, even then, such constituencies purely to preserve island communities are not out of the question - the Western Isles in the Westminster and Holyrood parliaments, and the separate Orkney and Shetland constituencies for the latter. If such great exceptions in electorate sizes for communities with no road connection are acceptable for those Scottish island groups, why is it so out of the question for some for the Isle of Wight, where the discrepancy in electorate size is much smaller? I refer the Hon Member to the information above re ferry links. 110 per day to the Isle of Wight. A handful per day to the Western Isles ... ?
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Post by gwynthegriff on Aug 28, 2018 10:32:16 GMT
The Isle of Wight is to be split by the (zombie?) review, anyway. Attaching it to Hampshire is a huge no-no. But why?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2018 12:14:40 GMT
I feel like members of my party suggesting cross-Solent constituencies should be minded that having spoken to members on the Island, the party's fall from competitive to completely irrelevant post-2015 was as much to do with the coalition as it was to do with having a candidate that year with a Southampton address on the ballot paper. The separation of the Island from the mainland when drawing up constituencies is down to community as much as it is geography. Comparisons to the distance between Orkney and Shetland are all well and good, but separating those two are different in that the resulting discrepancies in electorates would be much greater than that of one or two IoW constituencies. And yet, even then, such constituencies purely to preserve island communities are not out of the question - the Western Isles in the Westminster and Holyrood parliaments, and the separate Orkney and Shetland constituencies for the latter. If such great exceptions in electorate sizes for communities with no road connection are acceptable for those Scottish island groups, why is it so out of the question for some for the Isle of Wight, where the discrepancy in electorate size is much smaller? I refer the Hon Member to the information above re ferry links. 110 per day to the Isle of Wight. A handful per day to the Western Isles ... ? Of course - but I don't and never have advocated for a constituency with the Western Isles combined with the mainland, even with the huge discrepancy between its size and that of the average constituency. All I'm saying is that there are good reasons for the IoW to not be combined with the mainland; I never said that the case is on par with that of the Western Isles.
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
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Post by J.G.Harston on Aug 28, 2018 12:22:40 GMT
The Isle of Wight is to be split by the (zombie?) review, anyway. Attaching it to Hampshire is a huge no-no. But why? Attempt to do it and try and find a shape that doesn't look ridiculous. The geographical population distribution is all wrong.
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Post by minionofmidas on Aug 28, 2018 15:00:12 GMT
Still don't see why Wight should get more MPs than Jersey...
(Okay, so the issue is with the other Channel islands here, not with Wight.)
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goose
Conservative & Unionist
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Post by goose on Aug 28, 2018 15:02:34 GMT
Still don't see why Wight should get more MPs than Jersey... (Okay, so the issue is with the other Channel islands here, not with Wight.) Jersey sacrifices having a Member of Parliament in order to enjoy the benefits of being a tax haven.
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piperdave
SNP
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Post by piperdave on Sept 1, 2018 22:38:17 GMT
Moving on, does anyone have any idea where the constituency of Thames West is supposed to be?
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Sept 3, 2018 8:06:31 GMT
No. Absolutely and implacably opposed to that. How on earth should one manage the Isle of Wight, the Western Isles or Orkney & Shetland under such rigidity? My suggestion would be for the O&S MP to have half a vote in parliament and for the W Isles MP to have one third of a vote. For the IOW you could either have one MP with 1.5 votes, two MPs with 0.75 votes, or attach West Wight to the Lymington area.
I don't agree with all of what Carlton has said, but in general he's bang on. The overriding principle of parliamentary representation should be one person one vote. The lack of a road between A and B has never stopped a single MP representing A and B and never will do. It is nice when a FPTP constituency is a single coherent unit but this is not always (or rarely) going to be the case, and the Commission's new-found willingness to take chunks out of towns and counties and put them in with neighbouring constituencies suggests that they have thrown any principles that they had out of the window anyway.
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Post by carlton43 on Sept 3, 2018 8:53:14 GMT
How on earth should one manage the Isle of Wight, the Western Isles or Orkney & Shetland under such rigidity? My suggestion would be for the O&S MP to have half a vote in parliament and for the W Isles MP to have one third of a vote. For the IOW you could either have one MP with 1.5 votes, two MPs with 0.75 votes, or attach West Wight to the Lymington area.
I don't agree with all of what Carlton has said, but in general he's bang on. The overriding principle of parliamentary representation should be one person one vote. The lack of a road between A and B has never stopped a single MP representing A and B and never will do. It is nice when a FPTP constituency is a single coherent unit but this is not always (or rarely) going to be the case, and the Commission's new-found willingness to take chunks out of towns and counties and put them in with neighbouring constituencies suggests that they have thrown any principles that they had out of the window anyway.
Thank you for all those Likes Adrian. It is the most I have ever received by one person or at one time for a group of posts on the one thread. I only agree your downgraded voting arrangement for MPs with small electorates as a positioning stance to get the spotlight on equal sized constituencies and equality of value of the individual vote. In fact I can live with O&S and WI each being a small constituency because the MPs are just two amongst 650 and are at remote edges representing communities that are communities with special considerations and such remoteness as confers special treatment for both the communities and for the MPs as well.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2018 9:12:55 GMT
How on earth should one manage the Isle of Wight, the Western Isles or Orkney & Shetland under such rigidity? My suggestion would be for the O&S MP to have half a vote in parliament and for the W Isles MP to have one third of a vote. For the IOW you could either have one MP with 1.5 votes, two MPs with 0.75 votes, or attach West Wight to the Lymington area.
I don't agree with all of what Carlton has said, but in general he's bang on. The overriding principle of parliamentary representation should be one person one vote. The lack of a road between A and B has never stopped a single MP representing A and B and never will do. It is nice when a FPTP constituency is a single coherent unit but this is not always (or rarely) going to be the case, and the Commission's new-found willingness to take chunks out of towns and counties and put them in with neighbouring constituencies suggests that they have thrown any principles that they had out of the window anyway.
Prior to 1885, MPs (usually jointly) represented communities with very little regard to the population of each one. That was how the electoral system that we use today, and has been used almost exclusively (aside from the limited voting system used in Birmingham, among others, in the late 19th Century, and STV in University constituencies) in this country for Westminster elections, came about - the Members of Parliament came not to represent a roughly fixed electorate, but to represent the landowners of a county or a borough. If constituencies are not to represent any sort of coherent community, then whatever is the point of their existence? Surely we could have multi-member constituencies which do match with long-standing boundaries which actually mean something? The idea that one single person can represent fully the interests of an electorate of ~70,000 is fundamentally flawed, but even more so if there is no community interest between those 70,000. Also, as according to the Penrose Method, the weighting of an en bloc voting delegation, where the delegations are weighted, should perhaps (unintuitively) be weighted according to the square root of the population the delegation represents, rather than the population itself. Although there are constraints on that, including that it doesn't consider the absurd notion that such a delegation could be elected with a plurality, rather than the majority of the vote.
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Post by therealriga on Sept 3, 2018 9:18:23 GMT
Can someone with local knowledge tell me what the issue is with including Skye with the Western Isles? It would boost the electorate of the latter by 8,000. Obviously they are different communities, but surely the remote insular nature does provide some common concerns and is it so different to the Orkney & Shetland case? (I plead total ignorance here before some of you get pitchforks out!) I notice from past reviews linked on their site that the Scottish Boundary Commission has suggested it twice in provisional recommendations only for it to be thrown out during discussions.
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The Bishop
Labour
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 3, 2018 9:21:58 GMT
How on earth should one manage the Isle of Wight, the Western Isles or Orkney & Shetland under such rigidity? My suggestion would be for the O&S MP to have half a vote in parliament and for the W Isles MP to have one third of a vote. For the IOW you could either have one MP with 1.5 votes, two MPs with 0.75 votes, or attach West Wight to the Lymington area. I don't agree with all of what Carlton has said, but in general he's bang on. The overriding principle of parliamentary representation should be one person one vote. The lack of a road between A and B has never stopped a single MP representing A and B and never will do. It is nice when a FPTP constituency is a single coherent unit but this is not always (or rarely) going to be the case, and the Commission's new-found willingness to take chunks out of towns and counties and put them in with neighbouring constituencies suggests that they have thrown any principles that they had out of the window anyway.
If that is indeed the case, then the logical next step is to scrap FPTP - given that one of its strongest traditional justifications was "MPs represent real communities".
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Chris from Brum
Lib Dem
What I need is a strong drink and a peer group.
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Post by Chris from Brum on Sept 3, 2018 9:29:58 GMT
My suggestion would be for the O&S MP to have half a vote in parliament and for the W Isles MP to have one third of a vote. For the IOW you could either have one MP with 1.5 votes, two MPs with 0.75 votes, or attach West Wight to the Lymington area. I don't agree with all of what Carlton has said, but in general he's bang on. The overriding principle of parliamentary representation should be one person one vote. The lack of a road between A and B has never stopped a single MP representing A and B and never will do. It is nice when a FPTP constituency is a single coherent unit but this is not always (or rarely) going to be the case, and the Commission's new-found willingness to take chunks out of towns and counties and put them in with neighbouring constituencies suggests that they have thrown any principles that they had out of the window anyway.
If that is indeed the case, then the logical next step is to scrap FPTP - given that one of its strongest traditional justifications was "MPs represent real communities". Yes please, when can we start?
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Post by carlton43 on Sept 3, 2018 12:18:22 GMT
Can someone with local knowledge tell me what the issue is with including Skye with the Western Isles? It would boost the electorate of the latter by 8,000. Obviously they are different communities, but surely the remote insular nature does provide some common concerns and is it so different to the Orkney & Shetland case? (I plead total ignorance here before some of you get pitchforks out!) I notice from past reviews linked on their site that the Scottish Boundary Commission has suggested it twice in provisional recommendations only for it to be thrown out during discussions. We are into the habitual, the clannish and the traditional here. From where I type this I can see over the tip of Rona, the Trotternish east end of Skye, and on a clear day as it is indeed today, the misty south west of Harris in the WI. There are religious differences (RC, CofS and Presbyterian) and clan differences in all of these communities, but each is tending to diminish with time and with the considerable dilution of outsiders moving in. My community on the mainland was predominantly Highlander when I first knew it in the early 60s and is now two-thirds outsider. Skye has gone quite a way towards that, but Harris-Lewis far less. So that is the divide. I think Skye is a good fit to Ross-shire to which it is connected through Lochaber by the Skye bridge. It has a ferry connection to Harris which is a bit further away than the mainland. I don't think it would be hugely contentious to link Skye with WI but I have not asked and don't know. These are independent minded people who think about personality and politics more than the average electorate. They can be picky, truculent and stubborn,so it would need to be handled sensitively and with great tact.
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Post by islington on Sept 3, 2018 12:42:18 GMT
Well, of course, there is a precedent.
Prior to 1918 much of the Outer Hebrides (all except the 'Lewis'part of Lewis-with-Harris) was in the mainland-based seat of Invernesshire, which included Skye as well (not to mention St Kilda, then still inhabited).
Until the same date, Lewis was also part of a mainland seat, namely Ross and Cromartyshire.
On another issue, what was the 'limited voting system' in Birmingham and elsewhere to which nw12398 referred a few posts ago?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2018 13:36:41 GMT
On another issue, what was the 'limited voting system' in Birmingham and elsewhere to which nw12398 referred a few posts ago? Good question! As I'm sure you know, parliament used to have a lot of multi-member constituencies, which like a lot of council elections today, used the 'bloc voting' system, where each voter gets the same number of votes as number of members to elect... but not all of them used that system! Between 1867 and 1885, some, including the aforementioned Birmingham, were elected with a system where each voter had fewer votes than their were candidates to elect. Birmingham had 3 members and each voter got 2 votes, and I think it was the case for all such constituencies. My understanding is that the idea was that it would reduce the power of political parties, since no party would be able to win all seats. It also often (but certainly not consistently) lead to slightly more proportional representation. However, in the Birmingham example in 1880, the Liberal Party decided to organize with their supporters so that each one was designated to vote for 2 out of 3 Liberal candidates. This solidified the nature of political party organisation, and the Liberals were successful in winning all three seats. This particular example is discussed here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_voting#Practice_and_issuesThe system is today used to elect the directly elected members of the Spanish Senate (3 votes for 4 seats in each Community), and the Parliament of Gibraltar (10 votes for the entire 17 seat legislature) - the latter leads to the unusual situation where the largest coalition always has 10 seats and the smaller 7, regardless of the difference in vote share. Some countries, such as Afghanistan, use an extreme version where each voter gets one vote in a constituency of many members. This usually leads to lots of votes going to waste, since popular candidates get considerably more votes than required. It's also what non-party list STV degenerates to when people don't rank more than one candidate, which leads to the necessity of tactical nomination.
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Sept 3, 2018 17:54:11 GMT
This debate is a perfect example of the reason I have ALWAYS supported the use of MMP. You can keep local representation and create constituencies focussed solely on regional identity without compromising the democracy of the election because it is the proportional vote that decides the actual make up of parliament.
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Post by islington on Sept 4, 2018 8:25:26 GMT
This debate is a perfect example of the reason I have ALWAYS supported the use of MMP. You can keep local representation and create constituencies focussed solely on regional identity without compromising the democracy of the election because it is the proportional vote that decides the actual make up of parliament. It's interesting you should say that because this kind of discussion always reminds me of why I support single-member FPTP. When you say 'MMP', do you mean the 'additional member' system as recommended by Jenkins? Or do you mean the German version with the 'overhang member' refinement (which is currently causing an explosion in the size of the Bundestag - up to 709 now)?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2018 9:29:54 GMT
This debate is a perfect example of the reason I have ALWAYS supported the use of MMP. You can keep local representation and create constituencies focussed solely on regional identity without compromising the democracy of the election because it is the proportional vote that decides the actual make up of parliament. It's interesting you should say that because this kind of discussion always reminds me of why I support single-member FPTP. When you say 'MMP', do you mean the 'additional member' system as recommended by Jenkins? Or do you mean the German version with the 'overhang member' refinement (which is currently causing an explosion in the size of the Bundestag - up to 709 now)? I'll be honest, when I read his comment, my first thought was (as I presume yours was) that MMP is bad in this specific respect, because it requires bigger constituencies which are perhaps less likely to resemble coherent communities. Angela Merkel's Stralsund–Nordvorpommern–Rügen constituency springs to mind - it can kind of be conferred from the name that the boundaries are perhaps rather arbitrary. I presume this was broadly your point as well, given that the Jenkins system barely had larger constituencies, whilst the Bundestag has at a maximum, half of the members as constituency members, sometimes significantly less than half. However, I think his point was that due to the nature of MMP, there is little issue with larger deviations in constituency size - if it has a benefit to one party, that will be counteracted by the effects of the additional member system. In Germany, the constituencies have very little importance and hence they tend to be arbitrary shapes of close-to-equal electorates.
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Post by islington on Sept 4, 2018 10:27:27 GMT
The German system is very interesting because a lot of PR advocates, at least of my acquaintance, used to be very keen on it and strongly urged its adoption in the UK.
But in recent times, it has developed some serious problems at levels both technical (resulting in the exploding Bundestag) and political (meaning that the only viable Government appears to be a grand coalition that is gradually losing public support). If current trends continue, the Germans are heading for some serious problems and I'm not sure what, given the political and constitutional constraints, it's possible for them to do about it. Getting rid of the overhang members, for instance, would avoid inflating the size of the Bundestag and make it easier to form a CDU/CSU-based Government; but it would fall foul of the proportionality requirement in the Federal constitution. Alternatively, things would work much better if the CDU/CSU and SDP were to return to the levels of support they enjoyed twenty years ago; but this seems unlikely while they are apparently locked together in a coalition that no one really likes or wants but which continues to govern through lack of any alternative - and yet whose very existence precludes any realistic alternative.
I fear we're in danger of straying off-topic and maybe this discussion should relocate to a more suitable thread.
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