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Post by rivers10 on Mar 17, 2021 9:41:00 GMT
Interesting point. The Conservatives rely on the 'London Member' top-up seats to make a decent Assembly group - otherwise there would be a very large Labour majority and no minority parties at all. So I expect they will be preserved. Not personally convinced, the Tories don't give a crap about the London assembly, this is first and foremost about undermining the case for electoral reform more generally, the Tories will happily sacrifice some London assembly members if it means the retention of FPTP at Westminister |
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peterl
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Post by peterl on Mar 17, 2021 10:20:56 GMT
I don't have especially strong feelings either way given the unimportance of most of the offices concerned, but it does occur to me that quasi-executive positions where having some degree of consensus is importance are probably the only posts where preference voting systems have some degree of justification.
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Post by therealriga on Mar 17, 2021 10:48:59 GMT
Announcement from Priti Patel: "In line with the Government’s manifesto position in favour of First Past the Post, which provides for strong and clear local accountability, and reflects that transferable voting systems were rejected by the British people in the 2011 nationwide referendum, the Home Office will work with the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to change the voting system for all Combined Authority Mayors, the Mayor of London and PCCs to First Past the Post. This change will require primary legislation, which we will bring forward when Parliamentary time allows." questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2021-03-16/hcws849/ Good. SV is possibly the worst of all the systems. Will this create 25 London assembly constituencies or is the change just for the mayoral race? This would work quite nicely as Westminster seats could be grouped into 3s to create the seats. It's just for the Mayoral race. For reasons of self-interest, I'd be very surprised if they went to FPTP for the Assembly. With the current obsession around electoral equality, I'd also be surprised if they just grouped 3 constituencies together. Not only would it result in some ugly boundaries, many of them would be outside the 5% tolerance. I had a go at a 25-seat London. The problem is that most of the boroughs are in the 0.65 - 0.85 range. Only three boroughs, Ealing, Wandsworth and Southwark are within range. Two more just miss. Barnet has 1.06 and can shed a couple of wards to Enfield, which is on 0.89. Southwark is at 0.94 and can take a Lewisham ward to get it within. This was my effort, though I'm sure a better job could be done in south London. I ended up splitting 14 boroughs. Could have reduced that by one by keeping Islington intact, but it just made more sense to me to have southern wards from that in with Westminster and the City. |
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andrewp
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Post by andrewp on Mar 17, 2021 11:00:22 GMT
Good. SV is possibly the worst of all the systems. Will this create 25 London assembly constituencies or is the change just for the mayoral race? This would work quite nicely as Westminster seats could be grouped into 3s to create the seats. It's just for the Mayoral race. For reasons of self-interest, I'd be very surprised if they went to FPTP for the Assembly. With the current obsession around electoral equality, I'd also be surprised if they just grouped 3 constituencies together. Not only would it result in some ugly boundaries, many of them would be outside the 5% tolerance. I had a go at a 25-seat London. The problem is that most of the boroughs are in the 0.65 - 0.85 range. Only three boroughs, Ealing, Wandsworth and Southwark are within range. Two more just miss. Barnet has 1.06 and can shed a couple of wards to Enfield, which is on 0.89. Southwark is at 0.94 and can take a Lewisham ward to get it within. This was my effort, though I'm sure a better job could be done in south London. I ended up splitting 14 boroughs. Could have reduced that by one by keeping Islington intact, but it just made more sense to me to have southern wards from that in with Westminster and the City. What would be the results on those boundaries? Something like Lab 16, Con 7, LD 2? Conservatives winning the seats based on Havering, Bexley, Bromley, Sutton, Hillingdon, Barnet and K and C. Lib Dem’s winning the Kingston and Richmond seats. |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Mar 17, 2021 11:08:55 GMT
The option that the Conservatives preferred for the Assembly was for it not to be directly elected at all, but consist of the 32 leaders of the London Borough councils.
I can't begin to list the reasons why this would be a truly terrible idea as I would be here all day.
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edgbaston
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Post by edgbaston on Mar 17, 2021 11:50:26 GMT
Good. SV is possibly the worst of all the systems. Will this create 25 London assembly constituencies or is the change just for the mayoral race? This would work quite nicely as Westminster seats could be grouped into 3s to create the seats. It's just for the Mayoral race. For reasons of self-interest, I'd be very surprised if they went to FPTP for the Assembly. With the current obsession around electoral equality, I'd also be surprised if they just grouped 3 constituencies together. Not only would it result in some ugly boundaries, many of them would be outside the 5% tolerance. I had a go at a 25-seat London. The problem is that most of the boroughs are in the 0.65 - 0.85 range. Only three boroughs, Ealing, Wandsworth and Southwark are within range. Two more just miss. Barnet has 1.06 and can shed a couple of wards to Enfield, which is on 0.89. Southwark is at 0.94 and can take a Lewisham ward to get it within. This was my effort, though I'm sure a better job could be done in south London. I ended up splitting 14 boroughs. Could have reduced that by one by keeping Islington intact, but it just made more sense to me to have southern wards from that in with Westminster and the City. I obviously mean grouping the new set of 75 seats together. So they would by definition also be within 5% |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Mar 17, 2021 11:59:31 GMT
Outside of Westminster elections (which is a bit "Mrs Lincoln" admittedly) there's maybe not that much evidence that FPTP favours the Tories especially.
Which points to this being more another little bit of culture war crap.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Mar 17, 2021 12:01:26 GMT
It's just for the Mayoral race. For reasons of self-interest, I'd be very surprised if they went to FPTP for the Assembly. With the current obsession around electoral equality, I'd also be surprised if they just grouped 3 constituencies together. Not only would it result in some ugly boundaries, many of them would be outside the 5% tolerance. I had a go at a 25-seat London. The problem is that most of the boroughs are in the 0.65 - 0.85 range. Only three boroughs, Ealing, Wandsworth and Southwark are within range. Two more just miss. Barnet has 1.06 and can shed a couple of wards to Enfield, which is on 0.89. Southwark is at 0.94 and can take a Lewisham ward to get it within. This was my effort, though I'm sure a better job could be done in south London. I ended up splitting 14 boroughs. Could have reduced that by one by keeping Islington intact, but it just made more sense to me to have southern wards from that in with Westminster and the City. I obviously mean grouping the new set of 75 seats together. So they would by definition also be within 5% They wouldn't necessarily because the 75 seats would be based on the parliamentary electorate whereas the GLA uses a wider franchise which means that some areas, with for example a large EU population would have a higher than average electorate. Not that there is any reason to adhere to a 5% threshold in this case (as johnloony pointed out there is a huge variance currently between the electorates of the various FPTP seats on the GLA) |
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Post by therealriga on Mar 17, 2021 12:34:09 GMT
I obviously mean grouping the new set of 75 seats together. So they would by definition also be within 5% They wouldn't necessarily because the 75 seats would be based on the parliamentary electorate whereas the GLA uses a wider franchise which means that some areas, with for example a large EU population would have a higher than average electorate. Not that there is any reason to adhere to a 5% threshold in this case (as johnloony pointed out there is a huge variance currently between the electorates of the various FPTP seats on the GLA)What would a likely threshold be in this hypothetical case? The current seats do have a bigger tolerance but that's because under AMS a bigger deviation is usually tolerated as the list part fixes it to some degree. With the current vogue for more restrictive quotas I wouldn't expect them to go beyond 5% since the quota is already higher. |
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Post by therealriga on Mar 17, 2021 12:47:18 GMT
It's just for the Mayoral race. For reasons of self-interest, I'd be very surprised if they went to FPTP for the Assembly. With the current obsession around electoral equality, I'd also be surprised if they just grouped 3 constituencies together. Not only would it result in some ugly boundaries, many of them would be outside the 5% tolerance. I had a go at a 25-seat London. The problem is that most of the boroughs are in the 0.65 - 0.85 range. Only three boroughs, Ealing, Wandsworth and Southwark are within range. Two more just miss. Barnet has 1.06 and can shed a couple of wards to Enfield, which is on 0.89. Southwark is at 0.94 and can take a Lewisham ward to get it within. This was my effort, though I'm sure a better job could be done in south London. I ended up splitting 14 boroughs. Could have reduced that by one by keeping Islington intact, but it just made more sense to me to have southern wards from that in with Westminster and the City. What would be the results on those boundaries? Something like Lab 16, Con 7, LD 2? Conservatives winning the seats based on Havering, Bexley, Bromley, Sutton, Hillingdon, Barnet and K and C. Lib Dem’s winning the Kingston and Richmond seats. The Conservatives would probably win the Havering, Barnet, central London, Uxbridge-East Harrow, East Bromley/Bexley seats. I'd expect the Sutton one too, though LDs could have a chance there. The Richmond-Kingston seat LibDem. Everything else looks Labour. |
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Post by johnloony on Mar 17, 2021 15:24:03 GMT
I was trying to rearrange the London boroughs into different combinations to get 14 constituencies with more equal electorates, but essentially I found that no alternatives worked. The places where more suitable pairings of boroughs would be desirable (for example, Redbridge & Waltham Forest instead of Havering & Redbridge) inevitably had knock-on effects which were too awkward elsewhere. The only realistic way of dealing with the large electorates of City & East and North East was a version which ended up with an extra-large East End agglomeration which was big enough to be split into two constituencies. In other words, 15 constituencies instead of 14, with a few more in North London with electorates closer to 300k than 400k.
The only realistic change in South Lodon would be to have Bexley & Greenwich and Bromley & Lewisham rather than B&B and G&L, but that would be less equal.
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Post by greatkingrat on Mar 17, 2021 15:51:50 GMT
Outside of Westminster elections (which is a bit "Mrs Lincoln" admittedly) there's maybe not that much evidence that FPTP favours the Tories especially. Which points to this being more another little bit of culture war crap. If every mayoral election had taken place under FPTP and assuming no tactical voting the only results to change would be Mansfield 2002 - Lab instead of Ind Stoke 2002 - Lab instead of Ind Mansfield 2011 - Lab instead of Ind Copeland 2015 - Lab instead of Ind North Tyneside 2005 - Con instead of Lab Doncaster 2009 - Ind instead of Eng Dem So FPTP actually favours Labour  |
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peterl
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Post by peterl on Mar 17, 2021 15:54:13 GMT
Looking at the wording of the announcement up thread, it seems to be just PCCs, Mayor of London and combied authority mayors. Not sure borough mayors are included.
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Post by greatkingrat on Mar 17, 2021 16:02:34 GMT
Looking at the wording of the announcement up thread, it seems to be just PCCs, Mayor of London and combied authority mayors. Not sure borough mayors are included. If that is the case that really will be a recipe for spoilt ballots, particularly in areas with two mayors such as Bristol or Liverpool. |
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Post by Defenestrated Fipplebox on Mar 17, 2021 16:06:29 GMT
Outside of Westminster elections (which is a bit "Mrs Lincoln" admittedly) there's maybe not that much evidence that FPTP favours the Tories especially. Which points to this being more another little bit of culture war crap. If every mayoral election had taken place under FPTP and assuming no tactical voting the only results to change would be Mansfield 2002 - Lab instead of Ind Stoke 2002 - Lab instead of Ind Mansfield 2011 - Lab instead of Ind Copeland 2015 - Lab instead of Ind North Tyneside 2005 - Con instead of Lab Doncaster 2009 - Ind instead of Eng Dem So FPTP actually favours Labour
That assumes people will vote exactly the same way under a different voting system, an errornous conclusion in my opinion.
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Post by afleitch on Mar 17, 2021 16:20:41 GMT
They want to hobble it first, dismantle it later.
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Post by finsobruce on Mar 17, 2021 16:57:06 GMT
The option that the Conservatives preferred for the Assembly was for it not to be directly elected at all, but consist of the 32 leaders of the London Borough councils. I can't begin to list the reasons why this would be a truly terrible idea as I would be here all day. Would have made for a great sitcom though. |
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Richard Allen
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Post by Richard Allen on Mar 17, 2021 17:09:09 GMT
Outside of Westminster elections (which is a bit "Mrs Lincoln" admittedly) there's maybe not that much evidence that FPTP favours the Tories especially. Which points to this being more another little bit of culture war crap. Or maybe it is just getting rid of a rubbish electoral system. While I don't support their use I can see the case for AV, STV or AMS but I see SV as being a genuinely terrible system. If you want a preferential system use a proper one. |
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Post by greenchristian on Mar 17, 2021 17:34:16 GMT
Outside of Westminster elections (which is a bit "Mrs Lincoln" admittedly) there's maybe not that much evidence that FPTP favours the Tories especially. Which points to this being more another little bit of culture war crap. Or maybe it is just getting rid of a rubbish electoral system. While I don't support their use I can see the case for AV, STV or AMS but I see SV as being a genuinely terrible system. If you want a preferential system use a proper one. And if you want a two-round system then use a proper one like France does. |
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Mar 18, 2021 21:48:43 GMT
Considering I don't think combined authorities or PCCs should exist, I'm rather indifferent to this news. It's strange that the few elected 'mayors' of unitaries, districts and Met boroughs aren't included for the moment though. Naturally, I think those posts should not exist either.
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