Westminster Projection - February 2019 Update

Brexit B-35 also House of Stuart Anniversary

Strange Days 🔊

Just picture this: one country has the worst government in living history and a couple of generations before that, knowingly colliding head-on with the consequences of the worst policies of the last seventy years and what is the country's choice? Ready to give that very same government a fourth chance at the next election. Can't happen you say? Think twice it's happening here and now as latest UK polls show. Every time a poll pops up showing Labour in a less desperate situation another one follows that contradicts it. Strange days indeed.

Of course we all know the reason. This rare moment in time when the stars align to gift the UK that unique combination of the worst government since 1945 and the worst opposition ever, the ones who would manage to abstain if asked if rain is wet. The trend has again turned against Labour. But the influx of new regular polls was on the slow side until the Independent Group announcement (more on this later) so maybe a new batch will shed a different light. Or not. Though not necessarily the way you might expect if the latest YouGov is any hint.

We also had the first YouGov poll of the year using their Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification model (MRP) which Wikipedia now has filed under a section of its own. Bear in mind though that, for all its alleged sophistication, MRP remains a statistical approach and relies on uniform swing just as other models do. First instalment of 2019 has a 40k sample UK-wide which means it weighs heavily on the current rolling average and any prediction is likely to deliver results quite close to those published by YouGov.

Then the Weekly Westminster Circus goes on. Even John Bercow seems to have lost his grip on it some days but he also is a gifted comedian so you never know….

Theresa May suffered another humiliating defeat on Brexit at the hands of her own party last week. Meanwhile 42 Labour MPs (technically 41 plus John Woodcock) including 3 Scottish ones (Killen, Murray, Whitfield) threw the Bain Principle overboard and voted for an SNP amendement that would have requested the English Government to seek a three-month extension of Article 50. But MSM seemed to have bigger fishy fish to fry than this at the time. Nothing better than a good old Churchill controversy all over media to distract oiks from what's really important especially when one of Labour's Finest triggers it this time.

People Are Strange 🔊

Current Poll-O'Polls includes the six most recent fielded between 2 and 19 February including two after the Tory-Labour mini-merger known as The Independent Group. Super-sample size is 47,656 with a theoretical margin of error of 0.43%. Of course it is hugely dominated by YouGov's Mega-MRPoll and delivers pretty similar results with Conservatives 5.1% ahead on average to YouGov's predicted 5.2% Tory lead. But of course other polls carry a much more mixed-baggy message and we'll certainly have to reassess the situation once the YouGov MRPoll has been purged out of the system.

This paints a rather distressing picture of the electorate's state of mind. Even classic 'class divide' is blurred. What crosstabs from different polls show is that C2DEs are more likely to vote Labour not because they are significantly less likely to vote Tory but mostly because they are massively less likely to vote LibDem or Green. But they are also more likely than ABC1s to vote UKIP which will come as a surprise only to those who never bothered to understand the true mechanics of nationalistic populism within the working class. Exhibit A: how UKIP's collapse in 2017 benefited Labour as much as and sometimes more than Tories in Labour's Northern Powerhouse heartlands.

Obviously leaders' approval ratings have a lot to do with this. This fortnight's Opinium poll for The Observer has Theresa May on -21% net and Jeremy Corbyn on -27%. Interestingly Nicola Sturgeon does better than both on -15% overall including English and Welsh voters. Then of course nobody gives a rat's fuck how Surrey or Monmouthshire rates Nicola, only Scotland matters and here she gets a +3% net approval (40% approve, 37% disapprove, 23% neutral). These ratings are also reflected in the 'preferred PM' polling:

Again 'None of the above' is the first choice but then May still leads over Corbyn roughly 60-40. Both Labour and the Conservatives should also worry about some other results from the early February Opinium poll that was fielded before the Umunna Split. 27% of people feel represented by Labour and 25% by Conservatives, significantly lower than either's vote share. 38% feel than neither Lab nor Tories represent them and 40% think some new party would be a better option to represent them. What shape that then-hypothetical new party should take is carefully avoided so don't jump to the conclusion it should be the now-revealed English Macronism even if this is what Observer-Guardian clearly imply and support. That it could be some sort of true English Socialist Party sounds just as credible to me. Just sayin. And the first polls including The Independent Group do not contradict my view (teaser as I will deal with this a bit later).

The Soft Parade 🔊

Here is what current polling would deliver on the current 650 seats and on the infamous 600-seat gerrymander. Not quite fitting a predictable pattern as you would expect something closer to a repeat 2015. But the LibDems surgelet probably deprives Conservatives of the handful of seats that would give them a majority and paradoxically also helps Labour in a number of marginals.

I fed the polling average data into Electoral Calculus and Election Polling to see what they make of them. As usual their projections are quite close to mine as can be expected with models working on variants of uniform swing. The noticeable difference is that my model is slightly more favourable to the LibDems probably because of the weight of the proportional swing component. But here a handful seats make the difference between Tories a few seats shy of a majority and them enjoying a majority even it's the weest and most fragile.

For good measure I also added YouGov's own projection from their Mega-MRPoll. YouGov's voting intentions results are pretty close to the current rolling average as their sample makes up 84% of the current super-sample, so the comparison is valid. Their projection is really close to what uniform swing variants deliver so maybe the YouGov Model is not that harrypotterishy magicwandy thing they claim it to be. Right now we have no hard evidence it does better than the classic projections based on uniform swing, especially if you factor in the limitations even a massive 40k sample is bound to have.

A GB-wide sample of 40,119 amounts to 63 per constituency. When Ashcroft polled individual constituencies in the run-up to the 2015 GE their samples were usually 1,000 yet they still missed quite a few. So YouGov's claim that their model 'allows to produce a fairly accurate estimate of the number of voters in each constituency intending to vote for a party on each day' sounds like a smitch of an exaggeration. And while they always remind you they were the only ones to predict a hung Parliament in 2017, they fail to mention they got the number of seats right only for the LibDems and Greens. Their biggest miss was predicting the SNP on 44 seats, which is roughly what a standard uniform swing model would have predicted with what Scottish polls were available in the last week before the election. For the record my own model said 43 seats then.

When The Music's Over 🔊

On current polling a mere 27 seats are projected to change hands which is a rather low point in reliably recorded parliamentary history and explains the quasi status quo result. Recent trends are confirmed that showed only LibDems and SNP having some reasons to celebrate though their gains are well below what would have constituted a political earthquake. Only the distinct possibility of Nigel Dodds losing to Sinn Féin by a hair would make good headlines the day after.

The summary of gains and losses and the transfer matrix do not show any obvious and consistent pattern. Rather it goes in many directions at once with only Labour likely to be an overall loser and a mixed bag for Conservatives ending with a net loss of one seat. It's not event 100% satisfactory for the SNP this time as they're projected to lose North East Fife, the closest 2017 result UK-wide, to LibDems.

27 seats changing hands would be the lowest since 2001. Only in 1951 before that did such a low number of seats change hands and this was the only time when so few switching seats were enough to bring on a change of government.

Riders On The Storm 🔊

48 seats would be in the danger zone with only a minor swing needed to change the result. 27 Conservative seats would be concerned versus only 13 Labour seats. At opposing ends of the spectrum Conservatives could bag an extra 15 seats and Labour an extra 21.

Interestingly two of the new Independent Group would find themselves in the danger zone: Anna Soubry in Broxtowe, Angela Smith in Penistone and Stocksbridge. I fully expect Soubry would make it thanks to even a minimal transfer from 'moderate' Labour voters and a few LibDems. But Smith would certainly go down as the 2017 result was already close and core Labour voters would undoubtedly turn against her even at the risk of switching the seat to Tories, and the 'funny tinge' gaffe wouldn't help.

Take It As It Comes 🔊

The alternate Commons you get after reallocating marginal seats to the runner-up are not really more satisfactory than the direct projection. What current polling says is basically status quo, as what matters is not really the exact make-up of the oppositions, but how well the governing party does, or doesn't. So right now the likely outcome would be a Conservative minority Government propped up by DUP. Old boss, new boss, new tricks, old tricks.

A small swing (1-2% depending on the region) towards Tories would give us the 'Back To 2015' Commons we have seen many times already in recent projections. While a similar swing to Labour would once again deliver the kind of unmanageable 1910ish situation that was the norm for a while in last year's projections. Even the Unicorn Coalition of Labour and SNP would fall short of a majority.

Ship Of Fools 🔊

At Last They Are Free 🔊. After months of posturing and unbearable suspense the announcement of The Independent Group splitting from the English Labour Party came as a massive surprise. But only because more than four of them were involved. Or were there actually only six? As Luciana Berger definitely won the Political Comic Award Of The Year with her introduction as 'I am the Labour and.. (silence)…. oops…. (laughs)… uh…. (more laughs) I am the MP for Liverpool Wavertree'. This lot certainly are a 'funny tinge' of centrism especially now that pro-austerity Tory reinforcements have cranked then Up To Eleven. Will TIG become the Spinal Tap of UK politics? My tenner says they will sooner than later. Because of course kicking off English Macronism is a sure winner seeing how well the original version works in France.

Back to the original Seven Dwarves' motivations, their obsessive pounding at 'far left taking over Labour' just made me wonder which side they would have chosen in the days of Attlee and Bevan when far left ideology shaped the UK's future. Of course their sudden urge to secede from Labour had nothing to do with four of them (Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker) having already lost votes of no-confidence by their own CLPs. While Luciana Berger escaped one only by shamelessly playing both the pregnancy and antisemitism cards, and Leslie faced almost certain deselection. Just as Soubry's decision to pander to centrist voters had nothing to do with self-preservation when facing strong odds of being unseated at the next GE.

May right now has far more reasons to rejoice than Corbyn, all things considered. Westminster Grapevine has it that the odds of a snap GE being called in the near future have increased. May could gamble triggering it either by choice (capitalizing on Labour's weaknesses) or under duress (for fear other Tories might cross the aisle). Only detail is that dissolution needs 434 votes, so Labour support which I think they are highly unlikely to grant in the current climate. Or May could resort to the Schroeder Manoeuvre, a self-orchestrated vote of no-confidence as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder tried in 2005. Of course his SPD lost the snap GE that followed to Angela Merkel's CDU. But history does not always repeat itself, or does it?

Finally I will walk the dug on thin ice about the Gang Of Seven's fixation on Labour's alleged antisemitism which at face value you'd believe was the chief reason for the breakaway. Unless it wasn't and they used it only as an attention-grabber to hide the vacuity of the rest of their statement. Luciana Berger certainly went one stunt too far when describing Labour as 'institutionally antisemitic'. People easily see through that kind of overkill and the immediate backlash was to remind them that exaggerated allegations of antisemitism are usually just cover stories to demonize anyone who criticizes Israel's expansionist policies and negation of Palestinians' rights. Ironically Berger herself was targeted early in her parliamentary career for not being supportive enough of Israel.

The Independent Group are right on one thing: the Westminster System is broken and needs fixing. They're wrong on the conclusion: they are not the solution.

Break On Through 🔊

The real question now is how much real electoral potential TIG have. There is no easy or obvious answer to this. Between themselves Umunna's Eleven bagged 337,441 votes at the 2017 GE, 1% of the UK-wide vote and more to the point 1.2% of the English vote as TIG for now is an England-only thing. The only way to know their real influence would be if they all resigned to trigger by-elections, an option they instantly ruled out minutes after their initial announcement. Level One of irony is that they demand a People's Vote on Brexit but won't submit themselves to one in their own constituencies. Level Two is that now-forgotten Tories-turned-Kippers Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless hold the moral high ground here as they at least had the dignity to submit themselves to popular verdict by by-election.

Truth is Tiggers have every reason to fear by-elections as most of them would end up woodchipped and quartered. My best educated guess is that Umunna, Soubry and Gapes would make it on their own merits, if this is the appropriate term. Berger, Coffey, Leslie, Ryan, Shuker and Smith would be lyed down the pipes. Allen and Wollaston would probably face even odds with a fair chance of surviving if LibDems didn't stand in the hypothetical by-election. Just remember what happened to the SDP. When Commons disbanded prior to the 1983 GE they had 30 MPs and only 6 came back despite them being in the Alliance with the Liberals.

Opinium were the first to test TIG's electoral viability in their mid-February fortnightly poll for the Observer, actually fielded the week before the Tiggers broke free. Observer-Guardian were quick to headline about '59% of Brits ready to vote for new centrist party'. Not a big surprise as they are the main propagandists of English Macronism but of the course things are a bit more complex than this. Only 15% of respondents said they were definitely ready to vote for the new party, closer to what later polls found.

Interestingly SNP voters were the least likely to listen to the centrist sirens probably because they already have the party they need and who adequately represents them. Unsurprisingly the greatest support came from LibDem voters who probably had not thought it through as the intention is not for TIG to replace LibDems but to supplement them. Strong UKIP support is more surprising unless you count it as willingness to disrupt the Westminster Powerplay no matter how.

Later polls by YouGov, Survation and Sky Data then asked about actual voting intentions. YouGov and Survation tested both TIG-in and TIG-out scenarios while Sky Data tested only TIG-in which makes it impossible to quantify transfers from other parties, and is why I will only use the YouGov and Survation data here. For the record Sky Data found TIG on 10% which is consistent with the other two polls. On average TIG would bag 11% with 5% coming from Labour, 3% from LibDems and 2% from Conservatives.

It must be stressed though that the two polls differ wildly with YouGov seeing Labour as the major contributor to TIG while Survation's results are more of a mixed bag with LibDems likely to lose the most to TIG. But all three polls confirm TIG having just limited appeal in Scotland (2% for Sky Data, 8% for YouGov, 3% for Survation) with Scottish Conservative voters identified as the main contributors to the potential Scottish TIG vote.

Sad truth is that, whatever polls say, it is actually impossible to predict how many Tigger MPs would be returned at the next GE. We have absolutely no idea what a 'notional TIG vote' would have been in 2017, and no idea either where TIG would field candidates at the next GE. So it is quite a challenge to find the proper algorithms to process them in a uniform swing model, even a slightly tweaked and improved one. Their theoretical vote share also hints at fuck all actually as 13% UKIP in 2015 meant just one seat while 7% LibDems in 2017 meant twelve seats. Besides TIG are not yet organized as a proper political party and probably would lack the necessary electoral machine except in a few select seats.

Unless of course Tiggers finally decide to eat their hats and negotiate their own brand of the Auld Alliance with LibDems they are currently ruling out. Thus they could benefit from LibDems' electoral machine, however weak it is in most parts of the UK, and also from LibDems sitting out a select number of constituencies. Based on current and provisional polling LibTig could bag 5 to 10 more seats than LibDems on their own. Let's say this is for now the best assessment of Tiggers' real weight until we have means to project a more precise number. Definitely not a game changer of epic proportions.

Waiting For The Sun 🔊

Speculation again abounds about a possible Snap Election of 2019, with 6 June even mentioned as the date it might happen. Which is as close to 'two years to the day' after the 2017 GE as the convention of holding elections on a Thursday will allow. If this is to actually happen the dissolution vote in Commons would have to be scheduled in the second half of April. Technically the deadline would be 30 April as the Fixed-Term Parliament Act requires 25 working days between dissolution and the election. But acting on it a wee smitch earlier wouldn't hurt.

Though why would anybody actually want a snap GE is open to debate. The No-Deal-Brexit fallout would make it extremely risky for the Conservatives and it could be even more of a setback than 2017. Labour would be hurt too not just by TIG, but probably also by some of their pro-EU voters switching to LibDems and Greens, and major losses in Scotland also predicted by recent polls. Though there is no way to predict how voting intentions would be actually impacted by TIG or change during the campaign, as James Kelly pointed out at the end of his recent article on the YouGov mega-poll. So maybe even the SNP should be careful what they wish for.

I will seriously believe a snap election is in sight when DUP publicly and unambiguously announce they stop propping up a failed English Government. But so far all they have done is obfuscating with their 'the-dug-did-it' talking points blaming everything and the kitchen sink leaking on the European Union and the Republic of Ireland. There is a sure way though to know if Tories really have plans for a snap GE. Will they rush their massive gerrymandering through Privy Council and Commons? If they do, get ready for the snap GE as the atrocious gerrymander is their only way to stay in power while losing the election.

What's past is prologue and the hour is getting late so stay tuned for the unexpected.

History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake

The Great Gerrymander of 2019

Almost quiet on the polling front for almost two weeks. Even YouGov poll all sorts of topics and the kitchen sink, but not the next GE. So let's take a few moments to explore the long-delayed reform that might alter the shape of things to come: the Boundary Review, aka the Great Gerrymander of 20-something. Or not. Or just a little bit of it. Or totally so.

Boundaries bound to change?

A lot has already been written about the Boundary Review so I will not bore you with the details of the legislation. It has been a protracted process that started with the legally mandated Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster Constituencies, triggered by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. Ironically the Act also included provisions for the Alternative Vote Referendum that failed so massively in May 2011, the only time David Cameron won a referendum. The Boundary Commissions then published proposals (known as the '2013 proposed boundaries') for each nation.

Nothing came out of it as both Commons and Lords voted to postpone the boundary changes to 2018, which de facto killed the Sixth Periodic Review. The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 amounted to starting the whole process from scratch, now known as the '2018 Review'. The new Act reaffirmed the basic principle: reducing the size of Commons from 650 to 600 but with a slightly different apportionment of seats between the four nations and regions within England.

All four Boundary Commissions issued their initial proposals in October 2016. Then revised proposals were issued between October 2017 and January 2018 after public consultations. These proved controversial again and a 'final' set of proposals was published in September 2018. These too attracted criticism from all points of the compass except the Conservative Party, but were soon set aside while the last stages of the Brexit clusterbùrachfuck unfolded. For further and detailed information about the content of the current proposals I suggest you read Martin Baxter's excellent article on the Review(s). Another analysis by UK Polling Report is also of interest.

Closer to home the Boundary Commission for Scotland also published detailed papers about the original Sixth Periodic Review and the 2018 Review. They also made an interactive map available online, with all details of current constituencies and how boundaries evolved though the three 2016-2018 sets of proposals.

Are the proposals fair?

This is a technical question that points at the reapportionment of seats by nation and region, not the boundaries themselves (more on this later). Also quite rhetorical as the allocation of seats is required by law to be based on an 'electoral quota', that is the average size of the electorate in each constituency must conform to an uniform standard all across the UK. The only exceptions to the rule are the Island Constituencies (Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Orkney and Shetland, Isle of Wight) who have a life of their own.

So it's pretty much down-river from there as it's pure math, and simple one at that. Really no way the apportionment can be unfair as electorate data are easily available from the Office for National Statistics and anyone can check the results. So far so good the but the 2018 Review is actually the first to fully enact the rules. Current boundaries (used since the 2010 GE except in Scotland where they were enforced at the 2005 GE) come from the Fifth Periodic Review which perpetuated a major exception to the rule: blatant over-representation of Wales.

Scotland's representation then dropped from 72 seats to 59 based on the electoral quota (ironically defined back then as the 'English electoral quota' as it was based on the average electorate per seat in England and not on the UK-wide average). But Wales kept their 40 seats when simple math says that the electoral quota entitled them to 32 only at the time. Now the comparison between shares of the electorate, share of current seats and share of proposed seats by nation and English region:

Bear in mind that the 2013 Act requires the current review to be based on the 2015 electorate while the Fifth Review was based on the 2002 electorate and in best cases the 2004 electorate. So discrepancies between current electorate and the current apportionment of seats are easily explained by demographics. In the 10 to 15 years between Reviews the population (and hence the electorate) has increased faster in England than in the other nations, and also in London's suburbia within England.

Insofar as only the first stage (apportionment of seats by nation and region) is taken into account, this Review is fair. It can even be argued that the end of the Welsh exception also makes it the fairest ever since Periodic Reviews exist. So it boils down to a philosophical debate: is electorate-based apportionment a better approach than population-based apportionment as used in the United States, France and Germany?

Basically Americans and French believe every citizen has an unalienable right to parliamentary representation even if they don't bother to register to vote. While the British system sends the opposite message: if you don't register then you don't 'deserve' representation. Which can be interpreted as an incentive to register as areas with higher registration will be better represented. Exhibit A: Scotland with 8.7% of the electorate on 8.2% of the population. Just do the math: 0.5% higher registration implies a 3-seat 'bonus'. Fine with me.

Are the proposals biased?

That's the key issue as fair apportionment does not mean there is no gerrymandering in the second stage of the Review when individual boundaries are redrawn. The only way to assess partisan bias is to compare the actual GE result with what it would have been under new boundaries (the infamous 'notional' results that are often challenged). Here is what I find, based on reconstituted constituency data readily available online:

First spectacular result is that the first party in every area systematically does better on the new boundaries than on the current ones, and I will go into more detail on this later. Then only the massive weight of English seats turns the overall result into a significant bonus for the Conservatives. Even more obvious if you translate the whole thing into a bar chart comparing the shares of votes at the 2017 GE and the shares of seats under current and proposed boundaries. Net result: a hung Parliament turns into a Conservative majority thanks to the magic of redrawn boundaries.

Common wisdom including mine has it that Labour suffers from a competitive disadvantage under FPTP because of differential turnout and amount of wasted votes in deep sinkholes. This is not readily apparent in the chart above that shows LibDems as the ones getting crushed way below what their share of the votes would get them under proportional representation, and also hurt the most by the new boundaries. The point is made though if I replay the 2017 GE with a Con-Lab tie, both on 41.3% instead of the actual 42.5%-40% split.

Simulation on current boundaries has Tories 16 seats ahead and it rises to 41 seats ahead on the proposed 600-seat boundaries. Guess that makes the case that current voting patterns on current boundaries already favour the Conservatives and that the proposed redrawn boundaries would make it worse at the expense of both Labour and LibDems. Circumstantial evidence that the 2018 Review does include gerrymandering indeed. Of course there is more here than meets the eye when looking at the big picture only. A strange brew with a pattern of 'fuck Labour but fuck LibDems even more'. As always the devil in the details. Which deserve a closer examination nation by nation.

Northern Ireland

Just one seat down and no obvious specific purpose other than solidifying the DUP-Sinn Féin polarisation seen in 2017 and the communitarian split that so flabbergasted Karen Bradley. Only collateral damage is Sylvia Hermon vanishing from the scene as her North Down seat is grafted enough new territory from DUP stronghold Strangford to switch it to DUP with a 10% lead. Somewhat of an overkill but that was probably the desired effect: getting rid of a wildcard MP who wouldn't fit into the prewritten Westminster powerplays.

Fun part of the Northern Ireland Review is that an earlier version of the proposed boundaries made a complete pig's ear of the whole process with a notional nine seats going to Sinn Féin and eight to DUP. Must have taken some very creative cut-paste to achieve this but that was swiftly corrected with a return to the 'natural order' of things.

Wales

With nearly 30% of seats woodchipped everybody is bound to lose. Weird thing here is that Labour would actually win with a higher share of seats. Only notable Labour loser would be Owen Jones with his Pontypridd seat neatly cut in two and fed to the redrawn Cynon Valley and Rhondda.

There is also some creative recarving at work here. Only in Wales can you take bits of one Plaid Cymru seat and one Conservative seat and turn the resulting new seat into a Labour notional (see Carmarthen). Or add enough odd bits from other seats to a former LibDem stronghold turned Plaid-LibDem marginal in 2017 in a way that makes the new seat an unpredictable four-way marginal (see Ceredigion).

Scotland

Here the comparison delivers surprising results. You would probably expect new boundaries to hurt the SNP but they don't. That was not always the case but I guess the consultation phase helped the Boundary Commission come up with an interesting updated scenario. So now Scotland loses 6 seats out of 59. To which SNP contribute 3 out of 35, LibDems 2 out of 4, Conservatives 1 out of 13 and Labour…. none. An earlier version was even worse, with some creative redrawing in Inverclyde and Ayrshire pushing the SNP down to 30 notional seats and Labour up to 9. Was probably a bit too osé to last. 

The new boundaries here would actually trigger some interesting cases of musical chairs. Seven of the 2017 MPs would find themselves without a seat while one newly-carved seat would find itself without a 'natural' MP. The 2017 result would be reversed in seven seats compared to their notional predecessor seats. Nuff said fur noo. I will devote another post to the detailed oddities of the proposed Scottish boundaries. Including bizarre recarvings across Council boundaries and strange assemblies of wards within the same Council area. Stay tuned.

London

There's a pattern so far and not the most obvious one: fuck LibDems and don't fuck with the SNP, be not too harsh on Labour we'll get even with them later. So you'd think something different would emerge in London as a few seats can be scraped off Labour in one of their strongholds. Only it doesn't and LibDems are once again the ones hurt most.

London is a strange beast indeed with prominent figures of all three main English parties homeported there. Which offers a golden opportunity to score a couple of points in the Tory Civil War. Both Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith are elected from seats with strongly Labour areas in the immediate vicinity. So enough Labour-leaning territory has been carved into both to turn them into Con-Lab marginals notionally. Unsurprisingly BoJo is the most endangered with a 10% lead in 2017 shrunk into almost zero. IDS could still manage to save his sorry ass as his lead has shrunk from 5% to 2% 'only' on the new boundaries.

But playing a nasty trick on Labour was probably too tempting to miss. And that's what happens with some creative redrawing across Borough boundaries in the Hackney-Islington area. Starts with four seats and ends with three with one abolished in favour of a new seat overlapping Hackney and neighbouring Tower Hamlets. Current MPs: Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Emily Thornberry (Islington South), Meg Hiller (Hackney South), Diane Abbott (Hackney North). Corbyn and Thornberry would naturally fit into the two successor seats in the Islington area. But odds are Hiller and Abbott would find themselves pitted against each other in the surviving Hackney seat. Unless one of them agrees to move to the new and so far orphaned seat stitched together from bits and pieces of Bethnal Green and the two current Hackney seats.

The Rest of England

Now's when the chickens come home to where grass is greener. If you have read through the Three Celtic Nations and London and kept tabs then you know the body count so far is: Tories -6, Labour -8, LibDems -3. Not quite yet what's in the big picture we saw at the beginning though the LibDem Culling is already quite well underway. Now it's Labour's turn on the battlegrounds of Little Egland. Just watch the regional summary of seats that will go down there:

Conservatives managing to gain seats in two English regions is quite a feat when all regions are bound to lose seats. With the proverbial 20-20 hindsight LibDems must now regret having supported the 2013 Bill as part of the Coalition agreement. Probably they did not expect their constituencies to be butchered in such an extensive and creative way, reducing them again to fringe status with fewer seats notionally than the DUP and level with Sinn Féin. Too late to whine though.

Dressed in the skin the Wolf strolled into the pasture with the Sheep

Soon a little Lamb was following him about and was quickly led away to slaughter

In the East Midlands two great classics are at work. Pack Labour votes from two neighbouring seats into a safer Labour new one so that the other turns Tory (see Derby and how the new East-West split instead of the current North-South one strengthens Chris Williamson). Or add enough Tory-leaning rural territory to a marginal urban Labour seat to switch it (see the new Lincoln and North Hykeham). Of course the combination of both is a sure winner and that's how Margaret Beckett's 24% lead in the old Derby South turns into a 4% Tory lead in the new Derby East.

It's even easier in the South East. Allocating two seats instead of one to the 'special status' Isle of Wight automatically creates one more safe Tory seat. Then creative recarving and restitching around some large cities (Brighton, Canterbury, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southampton) does the rest with four Labour and one LibDem seat notionally switching to the Conservatives. Added bonus is that the Brighton recarving both kicks Labour out of Brighton Kemptown and makes Caroline Lucas' seat Brighton Pavilion competitive and a possible target for Labour. Pitting opponents against each other is always a good idea, isn't it?

Incidentally and certainly not coincidentally one of the few unchanged seats is Amber Rudd's Hastings and Rye. Which leaves her with a majority of only 349 votes and a very obvious first tier target for Labour in any future GE.

A case for electoral reform?

The consequences of the boundary changes might offer an opportunity to revive the call for electoral reform, i.e. changing the electoral law and scrapping FPTP. Last time it was put to a vote was in 2011, remarkable because it failed by a wide margin and Labour sat on the fence as they were unable to agree on which side to stand. Labstain already a trademark. The choice then was between FPTP and the so called 'alternative vote' more commonly known as Instant Runoff Voting. Which is absolutely not a variant of proportional representation as some might have believed at the time, but basically just a multiple round variant of FPTP, the big difference being the winner is elected on a majority and not a plurality of the popular vote. Might have been an improvement on basic FPTP though.

As you already know I do not support Proportional Representation (PR) but a straightforward Mixed Member System (MMS) similar to what I suggested for Scottish Parliament elections. Which of course will never happen as no political party will ever support it. Anyway I made a simulation of what PR and MMS would have delivered based on the actual 2017 vote, on both the current 650 seats and the proposed 600 seats.

Similar to my outline for Scotland the proportional part of MMS and the full PR are based on separate national lists for the Celtic Nations, and regional lists within England. On current boundaries neither option would improve Labour's result as their number of seats on FPTP is already roughly what they would get on PR. In all cases the main 'victims' of the change would be the Conservatives and the SNP as they are the beneficiaries of the biggest 'FPTP bonus'.

As can expected the main beneficiaries of any change would be the LibDems. Just bear in mind that they would need about 25% of the popular vote on current voting patterns and boundaries to get close to 50 FPTP seats. They do less well on MMS simply because the FPTP component still favours the two main parties in England and Wales, and the SNP in Scotland. Both UKIP and Greens would bag some seats though nothing spectacular because of their low vote shares at the 2017 GE.

Interestingly such changes in the electoral law could revive a Con-Lib coalition which would get a workable minority on PR and 650 seats, and a majority on all other options as long as Sinn Féin don't take their seats. Labour couldn't counter this even with the unlikely Lab-Lib-Green coalition that would anyway fall short of a majority except on 650-seat PR. Just sayin'.

It's not over 'til it's over 🔊

So there is enough circumstantial evidence to conclude the proposed boundaries are definitely a pro-Tory gerrymander, mostly concentrated on England outside London. Though with some bizarre traits. What is the incentive for crippling LibDems even more than Labour? Why go soft on the SNP? Guess we'll never know. At this point it's fun to compare what we have now with what the original Sixth Periodic Review would have delivered, based on the 2013 final proposals versus the actual 2010 GE results. 

There are also signs of some gerrymandering but to a much lesser extent than with the 2018 proposals and the visible transfers from Labour to the Conservatives could have been brushed aside as just a stronger by-product of the 'FPTP bonus'. Obviously back then LibDem Culling was out of the question thanks to their Protected Species Status as the Coalition's Junior Partner. Just note that the Conservatives on just 50% of seats would in fact have had a majority (300 seats out of 595) with Sinn Féin sitting out. Which was probably just a safety net in case relations turned sour within the Coalition.

Now what might happen next with the 2018 Review is as usual anybody's guess. Tories and DUP have a vested interest in seeing the revised boundaries approved by Parliament as soon as possible and all it takes is an Order in Council as the core legislation has been passed long ago. The Order could probably be drafted in a matter of days. If I understand the conventions correctly all is required then is that 'each House of Parliament by resolution approves the draft' Order, meaning no debate or division as the principles behind the proposals have already been approved and the Order in Council is basically just a technical formality. So I expect the revised boundaries to be approved some time this year and take effect at the next GE.

The only alternative would be to scrap the whole process altogether as Parliament did in 2013. But there is surely no appetite for starting from scratch again, mostly because of the long delay and additional costs involved. So brace yourselves for the next GE being fought on the final 2018 proposals.

In the meantime don't forget to stockpile all the basics including pet food. And keep the cooshite detector handy.

Saor Alba Gu Bràth