An analysis - Merseyside boundary figures released

On Friday, the Boundary Commission released the electorate results for the UK.


These are the figures that will be used as the basis for allocating new boundaries in advance of the next election, in order to reach the Conservative's magic number of 600 constituencies - a reduction of 50 from the current number.

Every constituency in the UK will be reviewed, while the Boundary Commission rejigs the political map to make sure each is within 5% of the UK electorate quota of 76,641.  Therefore each constituency must have between 72,810 and 80,473 voters.

In Merseyside, only Knowsley, Liverpool Riverside, St Helens North and St Helens South & Whiston are currently within this range.

Across Merseyside there is a total electorate of 1,010,822, which if divided by the electorate quota gives us 14.01 seats, compared to the current 15 we have now.  Therefore, we can expect to lose one seat within Merseyside.

What is not clear is how the boundary commission will reach its conclusions - will it create constituencies that cross county boundaries? There is an expectation they will, but with Merseyside managing an almost perfect divisible number of 14, it's still possible that won't happen here, except for one awkward problem - the River Mersey.

Looking at the numbers there are severe deficiencies in seats such as Birkenhead and Wirral South on one side and Liverpool Walton and Liverpool Wavertree on the other - each only managing a touch over 62,000.  But they're on different sides of the Mersey.  When sticking to county boundaries you reach the intractable problem of cross-river constituencies which almost nobody in their right mind thinks is a good idea.  The solution therefore will probable mean seepage into the surrounding counties of Cheshire and Lancashire.

Ellesmere Port and Neston, with 66,965 voters has got to be worrying about whether it is a sacrificial lamb to both Wirral and Cheshire Seats, sitting in the middle as it does.  This would protect Eddisbury and Tatton (both just over 65,000) from change and leave unharmed two Conservative frontbenchers.  (Is Stephen O'Brien a frontbencher?  Haven't seen him in a while....)

Or we could just abolish the seat with the fewest voters, Wirral West (only 55, 077) removing the Wirral's only Conservative MP. If not, savvy Labour seat-seekers should start showing an interest in Wirral West as it absorbs an almost 40% increase in voters from nearby, more labour, areas........

A final note - the electorate figures for Liverpool are 315,865 in contrast to the population of 441,900 at the last census - just 71%.  No other evidence should be necessary that this is a flawed methodology for calculating how people are represented.  It isn't hard to use our imaginations to work out why a Conservative government would want to restructure the whole democratic system in this way.


You can see the numbers and news release for yourself at http://www.boundarycommissionforengland.org.uk/