Harry Hayfield
Green
Cavalier Gentleman (as in 17th century Cavalier)
Posts: 2,922 
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Jan 10, 2023 22:12:31 GMT
In 2004, a proposal to elect a North Eastern Assembly was rejected by 78% - 22% on a turnout of 48%. This thread postulates what would have happened if the Assembly had been created with the first elections in 2006 and then held every four years afterwards (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022).
Boundaries
The Assembly would be made up of 14 constituencies made up of the 29 parliamentary constituencies that make up the North Eastern electoral region (as used in the European Parliament 1999 - 2019). Each constituency would elect four members (on a d'Hondt PR electoral system) for a grand total of 56 members. The constituencies are as follows (with 2010 Westminster constituency components)
1) Chester-le-Street and Washington (6,127 from Blaydon, 66,994 from Durham North, 37,781 from Houghton, 25,477 from Washington)
2) Darlington and Bishop Auckland (28,289 from Bishop Auckland, 66,915 from Darlington, 47,501 from Sedgefield)
3) Durham East (19,069 from Bishop Auckland, 69,412 from City of Durham, 39,122 from Easington, 12,842 from Sedgefield)
4) Gateshead (61,680 from Blaydon, 64,154 from Gateshead, 16,745 from Washington)
5) Hartlepool and Stockton West (71,228 from Hartlepool, 5,074 from Sedgefield, 52,928 from Stockton North, 5,024 from Stockton South)
6) Hexham and Durham West (20,093 from Bishop Auckland, 74,015 from Durham North West, 44,224 from Hexham)
7) Newcastle upon Tyne East (65,450 from Newcastle East, 71,054 from North Tyneside)
8) Newcastle upon Tyne West (62,443 from Newcastle Central, 63,164 from Newcastle North, 7,979 from North Tyneside)
9) North Tyneside and Cramlington (64,593 from Blyth Valley, 77,382 from Tynemouth)
10) Northumberland (59,953 from Berwick, 17,734 from Hexham, 62,910 from Wansbeck)
11) Redcar and Cleveland (31,404 from Middlesborough, 47,348 from Middlesborough South, 66,256 from Redcar)
12) South Tyneside (65,232 from Jarrow, 62,796 from South Shields, 16,197 from Washington)
13) Stockton East (34,036 from Middlesborough, 22,050 from Middlesborough South, 13,852 from Stockton North, 71,977 from Stockton South)
14) Sunderland Coastal (22,715 from Easington, 31,182 from Houghton, 72,688 from Sunderland Central, 7,920 from Washington)
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Post by rockefeller on Jan 11, 2023 12:20:46 GMT
If this passes it's by a narrow margin a la Welsh devolution in 1997. I reckon the results would mirror local elections to an extent - Lib Dems could win Newcastle seats, Tories could nab a Sunderland division etc.
I wonder if we get an English Parliament at some point in the 2010s instead of Brexit?
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Post by michaelarden on Jan 11, 2023 14:00:53 GMT
If this passes it's by a narrow margin a la Welsh devolution in 1997. I reckon the results would mirror local elections to an extent - Lib Dems could win Newcastle seats, Tories could nab a Sunderland division etc. I wonder if we get an English Parliament at some point in the 2010s instead of Brexit? Unlikely I think. Would have led to a rolling programme of regional devolution initially via referenda, but probably dropping them as more are established (a bit like executive Mayors). The interesting question is where would be next? Would Cornwall have been allowed its own referendum separate from the SW? Which would likely have been next in line. |
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Max
Labour
Posts: 208
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Post by Max on Jan 11, 2023 14:11:01 GMT
In 2004, a proposal to elect a North Eastern Assembly was rejected by 78% - 22% on a turnout of 48%. This thread postulates what would have happened if the Assembly had been created with the first elections in 2006 and then held every four years afterwards (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022). BoundariesThe Assembly would be made up of 14 constituencies made up of the 29 parliamentary constituencies that make up the North Eastern electoral region (as used in the European Parliament 1999 - 2019). Each constituency would elect four members (on a d'Hondt PR electoral system) for a grand total of 56 members. The constituencies are: 1) Chester-le-Street and Washington 2) Darlington and Bishop Auckland 3) Durham East 4) Gateshead 5) Hartlepool and Stockton West 6) Hexham and Durham West 7) Newcastle upon Tyne East 8) Newcastle upon Tyne West 9) North Tyneside and Cramlington 10) Northumberland 11) Redcar and Cleveland 12) South Tyneside 13) Stockton East 14) Sunderland Coastal The distribution of Westminster constituency (2010) to Assembly constituency is as follows (to be posted on January 11th 2023) If the referendum had been successful, the Assembly would have been elected on the Additional Member System, like in Scotland and Wales, not on d'Hondt. I was at the time a civil servant in the Regional Assemblies Team, and I drafted the relevant clauses of the draft Bill in co-ordination with government lawyers. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/251120/6285.pdf |
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Post by michaelarden on Jan 11, 2023 14:56:27 GMT
The Bill says the range of assembly members is between 25 and 35 - presumably for the NE this would mean just 6 top up regional members? It would also exclude the North West or Yorkshire becoming an assembly - unless I've missed something? |
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Max
Labour
Posts: 208
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Post by Max on Jan 11, 2023 15:12:23 GMT
The Bill says the range of assembly members is between 25 and 35 - presumably for the NE this would mean just 6 top up regional members? It would also exclude the North West or Yorkshire becoming an assembly - unless I've missed something? Casting my mind back there was a definite intention that the assemblies should be small to address cost/"another layer of bureaucracy" fears. How that might have been implemented in a larger area than the NE, we will now never know! |
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Crimson King
Lib Dem
Be nice to each other and sing in tune
Posts: 9,844
Member is Online
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Post by Crimson King on Jan 11, 2023 15:30:28 GMT
The Bill says the range of assembly members is between 25 and 35 - presumably for the NE this would mean just 6 top up regional members? I t would also exclude the North West or Yorkshire becoming an assembly - unless I've missed something? where does it say that? I thought the Yorkshire rreferendum was or was due to be next? |
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Post by michaelarden on Jan 11, 2023 15:32:29 GMT
The Bill says the range of assembly members is between 25 and 35 - presumably for the NE this would mean just 6 top up regional members? I t would also exclude the North West or Yorkshire becoming an assembly - unless I've missed something? where does it say that? I thought the Yorkshire rreferendum was or was due to be next? Section 3 (5) The total number of members for an assembly may not be less than 25 or more than 35. |
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Crimson King
Lib Dem
Be nice to each other and sing in tune
Posts: 9,844
Member is Online
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Post by Crimson King on Jan 11, 2023 15:37:00 GMT
where does it say that? I thought the Yorkshire rreferendum was or was due to be next? Section 3 (5) The total number of members for an assembly may not be less than 25 or more than 35. ok, so practically if not legally. 25 or so before Adittional members would be nearly 3 times the size of parliamentary ones |
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Jan 11, 2023 16:56:58 GMT
The Bill says the range of assembly members is between 25 and 35 - presumably for the NE this would mean just 6 top up regional members? It would also exclude the North West or Yorkshire becoming an assembly - unless I've missed something? Strictly speaking, though, while the constituency members in Scotland and Wales are elected by single-seat FPTP, the additional regional members are then elected by a modified version of d'Hondt - the modification effectively being that any party with constituency members within a region only gets additional members once the d'Hondt calculations show that the number of members to which the party is entitled is greater than the number of its constituency members. The one difference that I am seeing here from the Scottish and Welsh systems (apart from the restriction on the total number of assembly members) is that the regional members would get elected from the region as a whole, rather than the sub-national regions from which additional members in Scotland and Wales are elected. But once one takes those differences into account, the election rules seem to prescribe almost precisely the arrangements until now for the London Assembly, with its 25 members (14 FPTP from single-member constituencies plus 11 additional members elected by d'Hondt modified as described above). What this would therefore presumably have produced for the North Eastern Assembly would have been something like the 14 constituencies suggested by Harry Hayfield , but each with just a single member elected by FPTP, plus an indeterminate number (between 11 and 21, but quite possibly the minimum 11) of additional members. The system could then simply scale up for the North West or Yorkshire to distinctly larger (but perhaps a very few more - about 20 maximum) single-member constituencies and probably a few more additional members (roughly in proportion to the number of constituency members). This would mean that each regional constituency would have been equivalent to three or four Westminster constituencies - but then, each London Assembly constituency is currently equivalent to about five Westminster constituencies (give or take some quite large margins). |
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Post by michaelarden on Jan 11, 2023 19:12:02 GMT
The Bill says the range of assembly members is between 25 and 35 - presumably for the NE this would mean just 6 top up regional members? It would also exclude the North West or Yorkshire becoming an assembly - unless I've missed something? Strictly speaking, though, while the constituency members in Scotland and Wales are elected by single-seat FPTP, the additional regional members are then elected by a modified version of d'Hondt - the modification effectively being that any party with constituency members within a region only gets additional members once the d'Hondt calculations show that the number of members to which the party is entitled is greater than the number of its constituency members. The one difference that I am seeing here from the Scottish and Welsh systems (apart from the restriction on the total number of assembly members) is that the regional members would get elected from the region as a whole, rather than the sub-national regions from which additional members in Scotland and Wales are elected. But once one takes those differences into account, the election rules seem to prescribe almost precisely the arrangements until now for the London Assembly, with its 25 members (14 FPTP from single-member constituencies plus 11 additional members elected by d'Hondt modified as described above). What this would therefore presumably have produced for the North Eastern Assembly would have been something like the 14 constituencies suggested by Harry Hayfield , but each with just a single member elected by FPTP, plus an indeterminate number (between 11 and 21, but quite possibly the minimum 11) of additional members. The system could then simply scale up for the North West or Yorkshire to distinctly larger (but perhaps a very few more - about 20 maximum) single-member constituencies and probably a few more additional members (roughly in proportion to the number of constituency members). This would mean that each regional constituency would have been equivalent to three or four Westminster constituencies - but then, each London Assembly constituency is currently equivalent to about five Westminster constituencies (give or take some quite large margins). Gotcha - makes sense. |
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