2023 Review - North West

[islington]

Mar 18, 2022 18:07:03 GMT YL said:

Mar 18, 2022 11:27:36 GMT islington said:

In Cumbria, where I did not make any initial proposals, I'd also like to support YL (this is section 2 of his scheme) subject to one query. I'm not sure why the scheme supports the BCE's Barrow seat, in which the wards of Cartmel and Grange are joined to the rest of the seat only by the rather rickety 165-year-old Leven railway viaduct. Would it not make more sense for Grange and Cartmel to go into the YL's Westmorland seat, with Broughton & Coniston going the other way? (In this arrangement: Barrow & Furness (why not just 'Furness'?) 71741; Westmorland 73541).e (Sefton and Gtr Manchester) I'll stick to my original proposals.

Probably the answer is that, as someone who mostly gets around the country by train, relying on a railway bridge isn't something I instinctively see as a major problem, and Coniston as part of the tourist heartland of the Lakes feels like it belongs with Ambleside etc. However I'm aware that the BCE's Barrow seat has not gone down well in Grange and Cartmel.

I think it's worth considering the Lib Dem counterproposal for Cumbria. It splits Broughton & Coniston, but along a line which is going to become a ward boundary for the new Westmorland & Furness council. This allows Coniston, Grange and Cartmel to all stay in the Westmorland constituency, with Barrow taking on the Millom area instead. This allows for better (I think) boundaries than my proposal in the Workington and Penrith areas, though if we're talking about the new authorities it has two constituencies crossing the new boundary. There is a fairly obvious partisan motivation, but I think they've come up with decent boundaries, certainly better than the BCE's (which the Tories support) or Labour's.

Well, yes, but I'm uneasy with the proposition that some wards are less equal than others - e.g. here, or in Nhants or Bucks. I don't think it's part of this exercise to consider how satisfactory, or how permanent, a particular ward boundary may be.

So my test for a ward split is to ask: (a) whether it complies with the BCE's published guidelines; (b) whether is it forced, by the numbers, for a particular plan to work; and (c) whether the plan of which it is part represents a marked overall improvement, in terms of the statutory rules, on the best plan possible without a split. The answer needs to be yes to all three questions. In the South East thread, your Flackwell Heath split ticks all three boxes (assuming you have decided not to cross the Berks/Bucks border). But splitting Broughton and Coniston definitely fails (b) and probably also (c).

So I'd favour your submitted plan for Cumbria, tweaked only by adding Broughton & Coniston to the Barrow seat (bearing in mind that quite a lot of the ward is in Barrow already), which allows us to appease objectors in Grange and Cartmel by switching them to Westmorland.

[islington]

Revised plan now submitted, largely endorsing the proposals by YL across great swaths of the North West but sticking to my guns in Gtr Manchester and throwing in a few ideas in Burnley/Pendle and Cheshire. BCE-94353.