Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jun 9, 2021 17:42:21 GMT
BritainElects shows the new Windsor constituency as notionally Labour. Surely not? Even with Egham and Langley, the natural Conservative advantage in Windsor and Ascot should outweigh that 🤔?
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Jun 9, 2021 17:42:28 GMT
BritainElects shows the new Windsor constituency as notionally Labour. Huh? How?
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Jun 9, 2021 17:43:58 GMT
BritainElects shows the new Windsor constituency as notionally Labour. Surely not? Even with Egham and Langley, the natural Conservative advantage in Windsor and Ascot should outweigh that 🤔? Egham is part of the natural conservative advantage...
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Jun 9, 2021 17:46:57 GMT
My take on the proposals for Oxfordshire: - Henley is far better in its new condensed form, now it has lost the villages north of Oxford;
- Oxford West & Abingdon looses Kidlington but gains the city centre and Marcham, thus increasingly becoming a Lib Dem safe seat;
- Oxford East looses the city centre wards;
- Didcot & Wantage (an area that has seen significant population growth) looses Faringdon and other wards in the west and north of the Vale, gains Sandford & the Wittenhams from Henley - a ward which straddles both sides of the Thames. The villages in the south of the ward sit comfortably in this seat, due to their proximity and links with Didcot and Wallingford; the villages to the north not so much. I've seen a tweet suggesting that this would be notionally Lib Dem on 2019 local elections results - not that too much should be read into that;
- Bicester (another area that has seen significant population growth) forms the new seat in Oxfordshire, taking in the town itself, the immediate surrounding villages, Kidlington, and villages lying west of the latter. Overall, it mostly makes sense, although I'm imagining there might be some resistance from residents of Eynsham and nearby villages, who look more toward Witney. Perhaps a solution would be a simple renaming: Bicester & Woodstock. Yes, Woodstock isn't huge, but it's a historically important town, one which the villages in the west of the seat have far greater ties to;
- Banbury looses Bicester and the surrounding villages, gains Chipping Norton, Charlbury, and rural areas in the north west of the country; overall, for me, this seems sensible.
- Witney looses wards to the new Bicester seat as well as Banbury, gains wards south of the Thames from Wantage. For me, this is the "problem seat", and not only because of the Thames-crossing, which is unavoidable under the current variation quota. A seat that stretches from Foscot in the Cotwolds to the Uffington White Horse doesn't, I'd suggest, seem "natural" and lacks community cohesion. Really, what we have are "left overs" from the Vale, that don't numerically fit into Didcot & Wantage, and thus bundled in what's left of the Witney seat that has lost wards to Bicester and Banbury.
Overall, the initial plans are certainly not terrible for Oxfordshire, and I can't see there being too many changes to them - mainly because the numbers are so tight. But I wish something better could be done with the Vale, which (for me) is a real mess under the current proposals!
You're right about Eynsham, I imagine the pitchforks are being sharpened and the torches lit as I type! Re Oxford West, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Labour worked it they could turn it into a winnable seat. After all I suspect chunk of the LibDem vote in the Oxford portion is Labour voters who feel they have to vote "tactically"
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Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jun 9, 2021 17:49:29 GMT
Surely not? Even with Egham and Langley, the natural Conservative advantage in Windsor and Ascot should outweigh that 🤔? Egham is part of the natural conservative advantage... Egham has Englefield Green which contributed to a large percentage of Labour's vote in Runnymede I believe as a result of Royal Holloway Uni of London, which is part of that ward. The original Labour PPC for Aldershot in 2019 is/was a RHUL student.
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Jun 9, 2021 17:52:27 GMT
Egham is part of the natural conservative advantage... Egham has Englefield Green which contributed to a large percentage of Labour's vote in Runnymede I believe as a result of Royal Holloway Uni of London, which is part of that ward. The original Labour PPC for Aldershot in 2019 is/was a RHUL student. Englefield Green ward is not included in the seat and "a large percentage of Labour's vote in Runnymede" is not that big
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jun 9, 2021 17:52:58 GMT
Egham is part of the natural conservative advantage... Egham has Englefield Green which contributed to a large percentage of Labour's vote in Runnymede I believe as a result of Royal Holloway Uni of London, which is part of that ward. The original Labour PPC for Aldershot in 2019 is/was a RHUL student. Englefield Green isn't in the Windsor seat (it actually would have made more sense to add those two wards but the numbers wouldn't work). Englefield Green does not actually provide a lot of Labour votes despite the students and they do better in Egham Hythe which is added to the Windsor seat. That result is obviously an error though - there's no point trying to explain it in another way
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Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jun 9, 2021 18:04:42 GMT
Egham has Englefield Green which contributed to a large percentage of Labour's vote in Runnymede I believe as a result of Royal Holloway Uni of London, which is part of that ward. The original Labour PPC for Aldershot in 2019 is/was a RHUL student. Englefield Green isn't in the Windsor seat (it actually would have made more sense to add those two wards but the numbers wouldn't work). Englefield Green does not actually provide a lot of Labour votes despite the students and they do better in Egham Hythe which is added to the Windsor seat. That result is obviously an error though - there's no point trying to explain it in another way That boundary is very strange, but it's a decent solution anyway in a difficult situation and I applaud the Boundary Commission for proposing this here. Englefield Green may not provide many Labour votes because of the individual registration requirements, but certainly a larger amount compared to most of Runnymede, Chertsey and Weybridge included.
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Jun 9, 2021 21:45:17 GMT
My take on the proposals for Oxfordshire: - Henley is far better in its new condensed form, now it has lost the villages north of Oxford;
- Oxford West & Abingdon looses Kidlington but gains the city centre and Marcham, thus increasingly becoming a Lib Dem safe seat;
- Oxford East looses the city centre wards;
- Didcot & Wantage (an area that has seen significant population growth) looses Faringdon and other wards in the west and north of the Vale, gains Sandford & the Wittenhams from Henley - a ward which straddles both sides of the Thames. The villages in the south of the ward sit comfortably in this seat, due to their proximity and links with Didcot and Wallingford; the villages to the north not so much. I've seen a tweet suggesting that this would be notionally Lib Dem on 2019 local elections results - not that too much should be read into that;
- Bicester (another area that has seen significant population growth) forms the new seat in Oxfordshire, taking in the town itself, the immediate surrounding villages, Kidlington, and villages lying west of the latter. Overall, it mostly makes sense, although I'm imagining there might be some resistance from residents of Eynsham and nearby villages, who look more toward Witney. Perhaps a solution would be a simple renaming: Bicester & Woodstock. Yes, Woodstock isn't huge, but it's a historically important town, one which the villages in the west of the seat have far greater ties to;
- Banbury looses Bicester and the surrounding villages, gains Chipping Norton, Charlbury, and rural areas in the north west of the country; overall, for me, this seems sensible.
- Witney looses wards to the new Bicester seat as well as Banbury, gains wards south of the Thames from Wantage. For me, this is the "problem seat", and not only because of the Thames-crossing, which is unavoidable under the current variation quota. A seat that stretches from Foscot in the Cotwolds to the Uffington White Horse doesn't, I'd suggest, seem "natural" and lacks community cohesion. Really, what we have are "left overs" from the Vale, that don't numerically fit into Didcot & Wantage, and thus bundled in what's left of the Witney seat that has lost wards to Bicester and Banbury.
Overall, the initial plans are certainly not terrible for Oxfordshire, and I can't see there being too many changes to them - mainly because the numbers are so tight. But I wish something better could be done with the Vale, which (for me) is a real mess under the current proposals!
You're right about Eynsham, I imagine the pitchforks are being sharpened and the torches lit as I type! Re Oxford West, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Labour worked it they could turn it into a winnable seat. After all I suspect chunk of the LibDem vote in the Oxford portion is Labour voters who feel they have to vote "tactically" For me, I'm sceptical of Labour's prospects in Oxford West and Abingdon. Firstly, three of the seven Oxford wards are Lib Dem at local level; at a general election, then, I'd imagine most would vote along these lines again. The remaining bits of the seat - Abingdon and north-east of the Vale - are safely Lib Dem, although with a sizeable Tory minority. Yes, there's a significant Labour vote in central, central-north, and west Oxford, but I'd suggest, come general election, this would tactically vote Lib Dem. From memory, I can only remember a single Labour representative of Abingdon at district level; really, there isn't enough of a significant base for Labour to achieve any real traction here. The Labour voting Oxford-part of this seat isn't large enough to sway it, especially when parts of the city already lean heavily Lib Dem, hence why I think the former would vote tactically for the latter.
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Post by bjornhattan on Jun 9, 2021 21:59:13 GMT
You're right about Eynsham, I imagine the pitchforks are being sharpened and the torches lit as I type! Re Oxford West, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Labour worked it they could turn it into a winnable seat. After all I suspect chunk of the LibDem vote in the Oxford portion is Labour voters who feel they have to vote "tactically" For me, I'm sceptical of Labour's prospects in Oxford West and Abingdon. Firstly, three of the seven Oxford wards are Lib Dem at local level; at a general election, then, I'd imagine most would vote along these lines again. The remaining bits of the seat - Abingdon and north-east of the Vale - are safely Lib Dem, although with a sizeable Tory minority. Yes, there's a significant Labour vote in central, central-north, and west Oxford, but I'd suggest, come general election, this would tactically vote Lib Dem. Moreover, from memory, I can only remember a single Labour representative of Abingdon at district level. Really, there isn't enough of a significant base for Labour to achieve any real traction here. The Labour voting Oxford-part of this seat isn't large enough to sway the seat, especially when parts of the city already lean heavily Lib Dem, hence why I think the former would vote for the latter. Labour would be able to win quite a lot of votes in the south of Abingdon - particularly on the council estates around Saxton Road. They might also win a few votes among the young families who have moved to the town in search of property cheaper than Oxford. However, most of the town is comfortably off Middle England, and despite the proximity of Oxford it's not a particularly cosmopolitan place. And of course, the real killer for Labour would be the rural parts of the seat - Cumnor, Marcham, Wootton, and so on. The Conservatives would pile up votes in those wards. In fact, Labour would probably have a better shot at the Banbury seat (they have a strong base in Banbury itself, and Chipping Norton has a decent Labour vote too). The rural areas will outvote the towns there, but perhaps not by much in a landslide election.
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Jun 9, 2021 22:19:12 GMT
For me, I'm sceptical of Labour's prospects in Oxford West and Abingdon. Firstly, three of the seven Oxford wards are Lib Dem at local level; at a general election, then, I'd imagine most would vote along these lines again. The remaining bits of the seat - Abingdon and north-east of the Vale - are safely Lib Dem, although with a sizeable Tory minority. Yes, there's a significant Labour vote in central, central-north, and west Oxford, but I'd suggest, come general election, this would tactically vote Lib Dem. Moreover, from memory, I can only remember a single Labour representative of Abingdon at district level. Really, there isn't enough of a significant base for Labour to achieve any real traction here. The Labour voting Oxford-part of this seat isn't large enough to sway the seat, especially when parts of the city already lean heavily Lib Dem, hence why I think the former would vote for the latter. Labour would be able to win quite a lot of votes in the south of Abingdon - particularly on the council estates around Saxton Road. They might also win a few votes among the young families who have moved to the town in search of property cheaper than Oxford. However, most of the town is comfortably off Middle England, and despite the proximity of Oxford it's not a particularly cosmopolitan place. And of course, the real killer for Labour would be the rural parts of the seat - Cumnor, Marcham, Wootton, and so on. The Conservatives would pile up votes in those wards. In fact, Labour would probably have a better shot at the Banbury seat (they have a strong base in Banbury itself, and Chipping Norton has a decent Labour vote too). The rural areas will outvote the towns there, but perhaps not by much in a landslide election. I can't remember if it was at district or county level, but you are right, Labour did win quite a lot of votes (a seat) in south Abingdon (Caldecott) at one stage. Although I didn't live in Abingdon growing up, it is where I attended school, and a lot of my family still live here. Speaking with "would-be" Labour voters in the town, many swing to the Lib Dems as the party that "can" beat the Tories here. However, I'd go so far as to suggest that now the Lib Dems have been the anti/non-Tory vote in the area for so long, they are the automatic (go-to) left-of-centre party. And whilst I acknowledge that Cumnor, Marcham, Wooton etc. have sizeable Tory votes, they are also areas that have historically, as well as more recently, voted Lib Dem at local level. Moreover, going by electoral calculus, at the last general election, these wards were all majority Lib Dem.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 10, 2021 0:25:52 GMT
It looks like they've sliced the pocket Chesham out of Chiltern Ridges and kept that bit within the Chesham & Amersham constituency.
I've just read the report on this. They don't need to do the ward split for numbers - it's purely for community ties. Serious praise for the Boundary Commission there. This is a mile away from the previous approach where it was only a ward split if all else fails, and I don't think I've ever seen a split where the numbers would have worked without it before. It's a poor ward boundary, combining central Chesham with outlying villages, and they are calling it out. Good for them. Surely they have only just made those wards though? Messing about with them will mean a big LG review if they want to unsplit them
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jun 10, 2021 6:06:59 GMT
I've just read the report on this. They don't need to do the ward split for numbers - it's purely for community ties. Serious praise for the Boundary Commission there. This is a mile away from the previous approach where it was only a ward split if all else fails, and I don't think I've ever seen a split where the numbers would have worked without it before. It's a poor ward boundary, combining central Chesham with outlying villages, and they are calling it out. Good for them. Surely they have only just made those wards though? Messing about with them will mean a big LG review if they want to unsplit them They haven't 'only just made' them. These are the county council division boundaries which were first used in 2013 and are basically a stop-gap measure anyway. It is inevitable as well as desirable that there will be a review of the boundaries for the new Buckinghamshire UA before the next elections there.
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Post by andrew111 on Jun 10, 2021 6:15:34 GMT
Surely they have only just made those wards though? Messing about with them will mean a big LG review if they want to unsplit them They haven't 'only just made' them. These are the county council division boundaries which were first used in 2013 and are basically a stop-gap measure anyway. It is inevitable as well as desirable that there will be a review of the boundaries for the new Buckinghamshire UA before the next elections there. OK, fair enough. I just assumed they were new for the UA
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 10, 2021 6:48:12 GMT
It seems like they've taken the view that interim wards for new unitaries aren't worth taking particularly seriously as they're stopgaps anyway, based on what they've done in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. Which is much more practical than I'd have expected.
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YL
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Post by YL on Jun 13, 2021 7:32:36 GMT
Any more thoughts on the whole Berkshire/Hampshire/Surrey arrangement? I don't think it's worth going back to the "Silchester" approach: the BCE seem to have considered that and rejected it, and I don't think I'd be able to come up with sufficient arguments in its favour. But I'm not terribly convinced by Egham in the Windsor seat either: it seems like a rather ugly tack-on across a county boundary, and it separates Egham from Englefield Green. As islington said, it's possible to give the three eastern Berkshire UAs four seats, but whole ward solutions are unsatisfactory. Some time ago, Pete Whitehead pointed out that part of Clewer & Dedworth West ward is actually in Bray parish and so perhaps an excuse could be made for transferring it to Maidenhead; if you do that you can get a viable plan. However it does look to me as if that area is mostly in the Windsor built up area, so I'm not really convinced. Is there a realistic alternative to Egham as a small area to tack on to eastern Berkshire?
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jun 13, 2021 7:59:30 GMT
Any more thoughts on the whole Berkshire/Hampshire/Surrey arrangement? I don't think it's worth going back to the "Silchester" approach: the BCE seem to have considered that and rejected it, and I don't think I'd be able to come up with sufficient arguments in its favour. But I'm not terribly convinced by Egham in the Windsor seat either: it seems like a rather ugly tack-on across a county boundary, and it separates Egham from Englefield Green. As islington said, it's possible to give the three eastern Berkshire UAs four seats, but whole ward solutions are unsatisfactory. Some time ago, Pete Whitehead pointed out that part of Clewer & Dedworth West ward is actually in Bray parish and so perhaps an excuse could be made for transferring it to Maidenhead; if you do that you can get a viable plan. However it does look to me as if that area is mostly in the Windsor built up area, so I'm not really convinced. Is there a realistic alternative to Egham as a small area to tack on to eastern Berkshire? I did suggest that Englefield Green would be a better option that the two Egham wards but that the numbers don't work. Well they do if you also add Virginia Water and I think that area links a better to Windsor (the Egham wards are divided from the rest of the seat by the Thames with the M25 bridge being the only crossing). It involves slightly more electors (c. 11.5k v c. 9.5k) but works much better on the ground and tidies up the two otherwise awkward salients in the South of the seat. Not such a great improvement that I would probably bother to propose it (it still after all in involves an 'unnecessary' county crossing) but it would be an improvement. I wasn't wedded to the Silchester plan for any other reason that the alternatives put forward were worse. I'm not sure that the BCE plan is worse - certainly not to the extent that I'm going to raise objections. My only major objection in this region is to the Maidstone situation which has long pissed me off so that is the only area where it is likely I will make a submission here.
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Post by John Chanin on Jun 13, 2021 8:14:31 GMT
Largely agree with Pete here. The Maidstone thing is particularly annoying and unnecessary. I produced 2 schemes for Hampshire/Berkshire/Surrey. The first included a cross Hampshire-Surrey seat (different from the one proposed by the Boundary Commission), and a cross Surrey-Berkshire seat(but with Surrey Heath). I was then persuaded by others here that Surrey should be treated on its own, which led inescapably to some version of a Silchester seat. I actually think the Boundary Commission has done a good job in this sub-region, and like the Earley and Woodley seat.
Having worked my way through just over half the country now, it seems that this Commission has taken minimal change to extremes. Perhaps bitten by increasingly strident (and professional) objections to sensible changes, faced at the last 3 reviews. Perhaps it’s only if we ever move to an AMS system that we will get a complete redraw from scratch, and I don’t expect to see that in my lifetime.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jun 13, 2021 8:45:07 GMT
Sorry if this has been noticed before, but The extra seat in Sussex has been effectively awarded to East with Mid Sussex (which iirc was historically in East Sussex anyways?) except that Horsham CC loses its Mid Sussex bit. With Crawley unchanged (correctly, obviously) that left 6 seats with an average electorate a whopping 4.5% over quota. The plan works pretty well considering, but there's still that ugly salient from Worthing into Adur, Bognor giving Chichester town a close haircut and technically one "unnecessary" district crossing. But if we're going to start counting district entitlements anyways, Worthing/Adur/Arun/Horsham is worth exactly 5 seats and Chichester's 1.28 entitlement fits Surrey's 11.72. Just throwing that out there...
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Post by islington on Jun 13, 2021 9:29:47 GMT
Any more thoughts on the whole Berkshire/Hampshire/Surrey arrangement? I don't think it's worth going back to the "Silchester" approach: the BCE seem to have considered that and rejected it, and (1) I don't think I'd be able to come up with sufficient arguments in its favour. But I'm not terribly convinced by Egham in the Windsor seat either: it seems like a rather ugly tack-on across a county boundary, and it separates Egham from Englefield Green. As islington said, it's possible to give the three eastern Berkshire UAs four seats, but whole ward solutions are unsatisfactory. Some time ago, Pete Whitehead pointed out that part of Clewer & Dedworth West ward is actually in Bray parish and so perhaps an excuse could be made for transferring it to Maidenhead; if you do that you can get a viable plan. However it does look to me as if that area is mostly in the Windsor built up area, so I'm not really convinced. (2) Is there a realistic alternative to Egham as a small area to tack on to eastern Berkshire?(1) Me neither.
(2) Well, this is exactly where I got to when looking at this area. Once I'd decided that crossing the Hants-Berks border didn't yield a satisfactory solution, then it made sense to treat the three west Berks UAs together for 5 seats, as indeed the BCE has done (I'm not wild about the way they've done it, but I don't feel strongly enough to make representations). And once you've done that, as YL says, you've got to do something with the three east Berks UAs. If you try to give them four whole seats you have barely enough electors to play with and, so far as I can see, there is no good outcome whether you split wards or not.
The BCE has solved the problem by linking with Surrey, but the county boundary doesn't really lend itself to being crossed and the result, although not disastrous, is messy.
So I still think, to answer yl's question, that Berkshire's boundary with Bucks is altogether more porous and crossable than its boundary with Surrey: and this approach enables us (a) to remove Marlow from Bucks, thus permitting better boundaries in Wycombe; and (b) to avoid what is otherwise a horribly awkward boundary between Windsor and Slough. See maps upthread.
But although I still think this is the best answer, it's certainly not perfect and it's not my intention to make a submission in this area.
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