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Post by evergreenadam on Feb 20, 2022 10:45:24 GMT
This is the Tory plan for London.
Now, am I alone in thinking that the Tories have gone quite badly off the rails here?
Apart from the seven split wards, some easily avoidable, there are some areas where they have made what I can only describe as a holy mess. Enfield and Islington suffer particularly badly, and Bromley/Greenwich/Lewisham is pretty painful as well. The narrative arguments for these arrangements are thin and unconvincing, and in the case of Islington they pretty much throw their hands in the air and say (not in so many words), "It's only Islington, what do we care?"
All right, I accept that south east London is genuinely tricky and any proposal is going to have its flaws, but in Enfield and Islington there are obvious alternatives involving far less disruption.
I'm not dismissing the whole plan - north west London is not too bad, for instance - but overall this exhibits a sharp reduction in quality compared with Tory submissions to the zombies, and it's my impression that the same is true of Tory plans elsewhere in England. I'm wondering whether there have been changes in personnel since last time; does anyone know?
I am generally disappointed by the counter proposals from the political parties, they seem quite lacklustre or just totally unrealistic. This boundary review is quite difficult for them though, any minor improvement is almost always at the expense of somewhere else so by pleasing one area they just annoy another, reaching any consensus on a London wide plan is very difficult. Unlike other reviews it seems there is a reluctant acceptance that what will be will be. It will be interesting to see if any of the political parties spot some good suggestions amongst those received from the public and try to adopt them. |
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Post by islington on Feb 20, 2022 12:02:01 GMT
And the Lib Dem scheme ...
 Elsewhere, the Lib Dems seem happy with the BCE proposals except that they specifically raise an objection, without proposing an alternative, in the Hounslow/Richmond area.
I don't like the treatment of Brixton; but north of the river, although I might argue with some specifics, this is a big improvement on both the BCE scheme and the Tories' counter-proposal.
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sirbenjamin
IFP
True fame is reading your name written in graffiti, but without the words 'is a wanker' after it.
Posts: 4,979 
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Post by sirbenjamin on Feb 23, 2022 15:39:29 GMT
Grouping two LAs together to create better sized seats is fine and entirely understandable.
Grouping three together might be necessary sometimes. Possibly four even.
However...
A group of 17 boroughs, or however many it is - I lost count after Lewisham+Lambeth+Southwark+Croydon+Merton+Kingston+Richmond+Hounslow+Brent+Ealing+Kensington&Chelsea+Westminster - is completely unacceptable and indeed absolutely fucking ridiculous.
I'm seriously considering a physical protest outside the hearings.
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Post by where2travel on Feb 23, 2022 16:50:15 GMT
What an abomination that Tory plan is for Bromley (and elsewhere). I appreciate something needs to give here, but surely it doesn't need all of these: Crystal Palace and Penge are joined up with wards from Croydon, Beckenham gets Bellingham ward from Lewisham, Chislehurst gets a lone ward from Greenwich and Cray Valley West gets split.
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Feb 23, 2022 17:01:01 GMT
Grouping two LAs together to create better sized seats is fine and entirely understandable. Grouping three together might be necessary sometimes. Possibly four even. However... A group of 17 boroughs, or however many it is - I lost count after Lewisham+Lambeth+Southwark+Croydon+Merton+Kingston+Richmond+Hounslow+Brent+Ealing+Kensington&Chelsea+Westminster - is completely unacceptable and indeed absolutely fucking ridiculous. I'm seriously considering a physical protest outside the hearings. 25 LAs, I think - 24 boroughs and the City of London. There's one grouping of 4 boroughs in north east London - Havering, Barking & Dagenham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest. Then Newham and Tower Hamlets constitute a grouping of 2 boroughs. Then, south of the river, Wandsworth and Sutton each constitute their own one-borough grouping. And then, if I've calculated correctly, everything else north of the Thames is in one grouping, and everything else south of the Thames is in another - except, of course, that as Richmond crosses the Thames, it is in both of these groupings, so if you don't regard the Thames as trumping LA boundaries when it comes to grouping, then these two groupings are effectively just the one. Mind you, this is not entirely unprecendented - I seem to remember that in the 2018 zombie review, everything north of the river except for Kensington and Chelsea and the relevant part of Richmond was in the one grouping. But that time, the part of Richmond north (or rather west) of the river was just the right size for one constituency, Twickenham (and the rest of Richmond together with Kingston were just the right size for two constituencies). Basically, the BCE seems to have come to the view that while no single constituency should be in more than two LAs, it is not going to cause an LA any difficulties if each of its constituencies is shared with a different neighbouring LA. I very much wonder whether that is true in practice. |
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ilerda
Conservative
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Post by ilerda on Feb 23, 2022 17:12:34 GMT
Why is not causing difficulties for local authorities a criteria on which to judge the strengths or weaknesses of a scheme?
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Post by greenchristian on Feb 23, 2022 17:17:57 GMT
Why is not causing difficulties for local authorities a criteria on which to judge the strengths or weaknesses of a scheme? All else being equal a scheme of electoral boundaries that makes electoral administration easier is superior to one that makes it more difficult. And the BCEs preference for crossing boundaries over ward splits in the zombie reviews was justified on the (flawed) basis that doing so made things easier for both electoral administrators and political parties. |
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ilerda
Conservative
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Post by ilerda on Feb 24, 2022 11:00:48 GMT
Why is not causing difficulties for local authorities a criteria on which to judge the strengths or weaknesses of a scheme? All else being equal a scheme of electoral boundaries that makes electoral administration easier is superior to one that makes it more difficult. And the BCEs preference for crossing boundaries over ward splits in the zombie reviews was justified on the (flawed) basis that doing so made things easier for both electoral administrators and political parties. In reality though all other things never are equal. If a constituency is coherent and a reasonable attempt to preserve community ties, I don't see why electoral administration should be a factor. It's what these people are paid to do at the end of the day, and if it inconveniences them once every five years I'm totally fine with that. Our democracy doesn't exist to make life easy for political parties or electoral administrators, and if they can't cope with having to consult two databases at the same time then they probably shouldn't be in that job. Multi-authority constituencies have always existed and I don't believe any local authority should have the right not to be split between constituencies. |
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Post by greenchristian on Feb 24, 2022 11:37:18 GMT
All else being equal a scheme of electoral boundaries that makes electoral administration easier is superior to one that makes it more difficult. And the BCEs preference for crossing boundaries over ward splits in the zombie reviews was justified on the (flawed) basis that doing so made things easier for both electoral administrators and political parties. In reality though all other things never are equal. If a constituency is coherent and a reasonable attempt to preserve community ties, I don't see why electoral administration should be a factor. It's what these people are paid to do at the end of the day, and if it inconveniences them once every five years I'm totally fine with that. Our democracy doesn't exist to make life easy for political parties or electoral administrators, and if they can't cope with having to consult two databases at the same time then they probably shouldn't be in that job. Multi-authority constituencies have always existed and I don't believe any local authority should have the right not to be split between constituencies. I don't think anybody is saying it should be an overriding factor. But if we make things extremely complicated (e.g. by having one local authority with half a dozen cross-border constituencies) then we massively increase the chance of electoral administrators making mistakes. So I think it's absolutely legitimate to have it as one of the factors taken into consideration. And if cross-border community ties are superior to within-authority community ties in anything other than a small number of cases then the local authority boundaries are probably in the wrong place. |
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Post by robert1 on Feb 24, 2022 13:28:47 GMT
Sparse attendance at the first morning of the London hearings. Most of the audience were assistant commissioners from other regions
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Post by islington on Feb 24, 2022 15:40:13 GMT
Sparse attendance at the first morning of the London hearings. Most of the audience were assistant commissioners from other regions And yours truly. |
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Post by robert1 on Feb 24, 2022 16:37:22 GMT
Sparse attendance at the first morning of the London hearings. Most of the audience were assistant commissioners from other regions And yours truly. You were, I think, on earlier than scheduled. My intention was to pop across to listen. Genuinely sorry I missed you. |
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Feb 24, 2022 17:29:19 GMT
Sparse attendance at the first morning of the London hearings. Most of the audience were assistant commissioners from other regions And yours truly. Anything interesting to report? |
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Post by islington on Feb 25, 2022 12:15:03 GMT
Anything interesting to report? Sorry not to reply yesterday but I hadn't recovered from the giddy excitement.
I thought it was interesting that so many people trooped up to support the BCE proposals in north London, even their more questionable aspects such as putting a boundary through the middle of Hampstead or needlessly disrupting the perfectly satisfactory and within-range Islington N seat. The other thing these people had in common was that it was evident that they had all been put up to this by the Labour Party, which has evidently decided that it likes the BCE's initial proposals and is determined to defend them even in parts of north London where obviously superior plans have been put forward by the Tories, the Lib Dems, or even (ahem) by random members of the public.
Many of the contributions focused on specific areas: Kilburn (Labour's pleas to keep it together and never mind what this does to Hampstead), Herne Hill (an area where Labour objects to the BCE scheme and is desperate to keep a Norwood/Dulwich combination), and Chelsea (this was evidently a Tory-coordinated campaign).
There was also my own presentation, a tour de force of scintillating brilliance as you would expect.
Seriously, I ran over my time by quite a bit so I'm grateful to the BCE chair for letting me keep going. When I sought him out at the next break to thank him for his indulgence, he replied that he did it because I was being interesting.
Roger Pratt was there for the Tories, so it seems my speculation the other day about a change of personnel on the Tory side was ill-founded.
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Post by greatkingrat on Feb 25, 2022 12:26:17 GMT
Why is Labour that bothered about Herne Hill? Surely all the seats in that area will be safe Labour, however you draw the boundaries?
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Post by islington on Feb 25, 2022 15:25:32 GMT
Why is Labour that bothered about Herne Hill? Surely all the seats in that area will be safe Labour, however you draw the boundaries? Search me.
It could be just to placate Helen Hayes, who was there yesterday to object to the dismemberment of her seat. Or maybe they've identified knock-on effects elsewhere in south London that they think will be to their advantage.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Feb 25, 2022 17:46:35 GMT
I thought it was interesting that so many people trooped up to support the BCE proposals in north London, even their more questionable aspects such as putting a boundary through the middle of Hampstead or needlessly disrupting the perfectly satisfactory and within-range Islington N seat. The other thing these people had in common was that it was evident that they had all been put up to this by the Labour Party, which has evidently decided that it likes the BCE's initial proposals and is determined to defend them even in parts of north London where obviously superior plans have been put forward by the Tories, the Lib Dems, or even (ahem) by random members of the public. Many of the contributions focused on specific areas: Kilburn (Labour's pleas to keep it together and never mind what this does to Hampstead), Herne Hill (an area where Labour objects to the BCE scheme and is desperate to keep a Norwood/Dulwich combination), and&nbamsp; Chelsea (this was evidently a Tory-coordinated campaign). I guess we have to hope that the Assistant Commissioners are capable of seeing organised campaigns from the political parties for what they are. I don't think I will be going to a hearing -- they are all on work days and the nearest are in Leeds -- so I will just have to hope that the BCE's statement that written representations are taken as seriously as ones at hearings is true. Anyway, the BCE's proposals in my own area coincide with mine -- and indeed the general consensus on here -- and they seem to be pretty uncontroversial, which I suspect is why there aren't any hearings here, so it's not as if I actually care that much. |
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Post by islington on Feb 26, 2022 15:43:30 GMT
Here's one of the recordings from Thursday's public hearing at Central Hall, Westminster. My bit starts at 24.28 if anyone is interested.
And to answer the obvious questions -
- Yes, I really am that fat.
- No, I don't normally walk with a stick but I'd done something to my back and could hardly move. I can still feel the pain two days later but it's slowly wearing off.
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Post by evergreenadam on Feb 26, 2022 16:16:18 GMT
Here's one of the recordings from Thursday's public hearing at Central Hall, Westminster. My bit starts at 24.28 if anyone is interested.
And to answer the obvious questions -
- Yes, I really am that fat.
- No, I don't normally walk with a stick but I'd done something to my back and could hardly move. I can still feel the pain two days later but it's slowly wearing off.
Well done for making the effort to get there. |
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Post by rogerg on Feb 27, 2022 18:35:31 GMT
I was there for the Lib Dems. It felt very low key. Most of the excitement had gone as this time around we all knew what the other parties were counter-proposing. No surprises all round.
Presumably Labour's south London submission is about restoring a clear successor seat for each of their incumbents. Continuity for all existing seats was a point they particularly stressed. Helen Hayes was originally Dulwich based but she might have to face Ellie Reeves for that, who otherwise only has the new kind-of-marginal Beckenham. Not sure if enough of the Lambeth bits are going into either the Clapham & Brixton or Norwood seats for her to be able to exclude challenges. But both are very different from her current patch. But the Labour counterprosal to retain Dulwich & W Norwood is a bit rubbish. It splits East Dulwich from Dulwich, splits Camberwell and needs a split of Lambeth's Thornton ward (bizarrely splitting it east/west when the LGBCE has just split it north/south, which is much more natural).
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