These boundary changes will be imposed by Stalinist edict
Cameron's recasting of constituencies will spark public protests. He has devised maximum turmoil for minimal gain
Polly Toynbee
Guardian The teeth-gnashing list of things Labour could, should and didn't do is long. Of these, failure to push through electoral reform and state funding of political parties stand out as the most shortsighted, sectarian and ultimately self-harming.
We are where we are – but never forget there would be no Tory-Lib Dem coalition had Blair faced down his own party to pursue his first instinct and bring in the electoral reform proposed by the Roy Jenkins commission. The Brown, Straw and Prescott forces of conservatism hugely outweighed the small band of Labour reformers. At least they finally got an Alternative Vote (AV) referendum into the last manifesto – the choice to rank candidates 1, 2, 3 instead of a single X. Yesterday the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill's second reading gave many Labour anti-reformers a chance to wriggle free. The inclusion of Tory-favouring boundary changes with no public appeals gives Labour an excuse to vote against AV, which so many detested anyway.
All parties proclaim their high constitutional principles, and all are equally self-interested. AV only crept into Labour's manifesto when polls showed they would need Lib Dem support to stay in government. Many want to ditch it, and otherwise reasonable Labour MPs can be heard declaring they are damned if they'll do anything to help the Lib Dems, collaborating on cuts that impoverish the poor.
Better grounds for opposing it come from Alan Johnson, a long-time reformer. He fears this "only chance in my lifetime" for reform will be lost in the referendum with a massive Tory campaign against it: better to wait until Labour is back in power, probably in coalition, with a proper proportional option on the ballot paper. But most reformers want to seize this chance. Why trust Labour in future anyway?
Labour's new leader will have to take a stand. After supporting it in the manifesto, the leader's reputation for honesty will depend on fighting strongly for a yes vote, throwing his authority to whip in his halfhearted, divided party.
But the boundary question is tricky. At first glance Cameron is on strong ground: there are too many MPs, some constituencies have grown too big, others too small. Of course he wouldn't do it unless it favoured his own party, but that doesn't make him wrong. Yet why cut just 50 MPs, when a Commons of many fewer would enhance MPs' power and sharpen their role? Fewer MPs who devoted all their time to government would give councillors a greater role locally. Of course Cameron chose 50 as the number where the cuts harm Labour most and Tories least. If Labour wanted to embrace the broad principle of equal constituencies, the new leader could seize a patch of moral high ground by suggesting an even bigger cut in MPs.
But Labour may score on this in the end. In the coming months Cameron may wonder whether this fight was worth the candle. Cutting 50 seats, according to the independent Democratic Audit, would have lost Labour 25 seats, the Tories 13 and the Lib Dems 7. But it would not have tipped the balance enough to gain a Tory majority.
There will be an almighty row over this – and the opponents will not just be Labour: there will be equally distraught protests from Tory and Lib Dem voters. Usually the Boundary Commissions plod along re-ordering constituency sizes with consultation on local sensitivities and a system of public appeals. Cameron is sweeping all that away. A strict numerical equality takes precedence over crossing every regional, county and even ward boundary. MPs may straddle two local authorities, may be half in a city and half in a county, crossing natural divides with no recognition of fierce local identity.
The Isle of Wight has become the totemic problem. With a population too big to fit the prescribed 76,000 limit, yet too small for two MPs, a slice will be attached to mainland Hampshire – and the Vectians won't have it. Knock-on effects ripple all the way up the country as hundreds of seats are redrawn. Forget Cameron talk of localism: this will be the most Stalinist of top-down edicts. Local MPs, local newspapers and radio stations, councils of all political hues, will object passionately to boundaries that will resemble the British Empire's drawing of straight lines regardless of tribes. The convenient exemptions for three Lib Dem Scottish seats will only anger other areas.
All this upheaval would be worthwhile if it were part of a more proportional system. But Cameron may find he has devised maximum turmoil for minimal gain. In his haste to have the new system in place for the next election, there will be no public hearings. But there will be very public protests.
That may be trivial compared to a more serious problem – the poor state of the registers that will be used to determine numbers, especially in densely populated places. The accuracy of registers depends on how much effort councils put into them. Some Tory councils are lax: why spend money encouraging poor people to vote? Cameron and Clegg have just axed the participation fund that helped councils encourage registration and voting: why bother when non-voters are mainly Labour-inclined? Inner-city registers are most inaccurate. Nationally only 56% of 17- to 24-year-olds, 49% of private tenants and 31% of ethnic minorities are registered to vote. The Electoral Commission notes the "declining motivation to register".
Registers could be greatly improved if they used all data from every source, but only Northern Ireland is allowed to match information from housing benefit, secondary schools, utilities, pensions and benefits to ensure everyone known to officialdom is on the register. That should be used everywhere for head-counting purposes: deprived areas complain bitterly that they are paid too little per uncounted capita by central government for schools and all services. If people worry about being on a public register, voters could choose to stay off a publicly published register, with legal protection from use of registration by any other authority.
There are good reasons to oppose these crude boundary changes. Some in Labour may not deploy these with much good faith. Many just want to scupper the AV reform and wreak revenge on the Lib Dems – with whom, some day soon, they may find themselves having to work alongside. Let's hope Labour's new leader has the vision to get this right.
