The redrawing of constituency boundaries is always a contentious issue. MPs who thought they had a safe seat can find their political careers put in peril by a seemingly arbitrary line drawn across a map. Parties worry about whether the changes might make it more difficult for them to win an overall majority. Labour, in particular, has long had cause for concern given that for much of the postwar period the population has been shifting out of (Labour-voting) cities and the north and into (more Conservative) suburban areas and the south, a movement that has then been reflected in each boundary review.
Many an MP and party strategist will therefore have spent the last few days poring over the final recommendations of the four boundary commissions (one for each part of the UK) that were released just before the end of June deadline they had been set. The changes have been a long time coming. Though only implemented in 2010 (except in Scotland, in 2005) the current boundaries are based on the electoral registers from the turn of the century. They were meant to be revised before the 2015 election, but that review was halted when the Liberal Democrats, then in coalition with the Conservatives, voted (together with Labour) to stop the process in retaliation for the government’s failure to pursue House of Lords reform. A second attempt was made between 2016 and 2018, but, fearing defeat in a House that was bitterly divided over Brexit, the government never put the boundary commissions’ work to the Commons for approval. Only now is a third attempt, set in train after the 2019 election, finally on the edge of fruition.
Not least of the reasons why reform has proven so difficult is that, in embarking on a new review in 2011, the coalition government not only radically rewrote the rules under which the commissioners operate, but also proposed the number of MPs be cut from 650 to 600, a recognition of the adverse public reaction to the MPs’ expenses scandal. As a result of the extensive redrawing that would have been required to accommodate such a cut, hardly any MPs could assume their career was safe. Wisely, perhaps, that change was reversed by Boris Johnson’s government. At the same time, the procedure for putting the commissioners’ proposals into law has been changed so that MPs no longer have to approve them, which should ensure that this time they will not be left gathering dust on the shelf.
That said, much of the rewriting of the rules undertaken by the coalition is still in place. In particular, the current rules will ensure that the number of MPs in each of the four parts of the UK reflects their share of the UK-wide electorate, a change that explains why the number of MPs from Wales is being reduced from 40 to 32 (while Scotland, whose representation had already been cut in 2005 from 72 to 59, loses another two). There is a greater emphasis on creating individual constituencies with equal numbers of voters (no more than 5 per cent above or below the UK-wide “quota”, except in the Orkney and Shetland islands, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Ynys Môn, and the Isle of Wight).
Given the length of time since the current boundaries were drawn, and the significant rewriting of the rules that has now taken place, we might anticipate that the new boundaries would have a significant impact on the parties’ prospects. However, the psephology of the boundary review is different this time around. First, the more recent pattern of population movement has not simply been one of movement out of Labour constituencies into Conservative ones. In particular, London, now dominated by Labour, has been growing rather than shrinking and gains two seats—in sharp contrast to reductions in previous reviews. More generally, while seats in England won by the Conservatives in 2017 saw their electorate increase by an average of 5,600 between 2005 and 2019, the increase in Labour-held seats was, at 4,100, not so far behind.
Second, many of the traditionally Labour, so-called Red Wall seats the Conservatives gained in 2019 have relatively small electorates. The 54 seats that the Tories won from Labour that year on average contained 4,250 fewer voters than seats across the country as a whole. This pattern reduced the difference between the size of the average Conservative and Labour constituency from nearly 4,000 to less than 2,500. For that gap of just under 2,500 to be eliminated, the boundary review needs only to have the effect of switching four seats from Labour to Conservative.
In short, the changed electoral geography bequeathed by the 2019 general election has reduced the likely impact of the boundary review. True, even on the current boundaries that geography still left Labour with a mountain to climb—securing a 12-point lead over the Conservatives—in order to win an overall majority. It is just that the review is unlikely to make its task significantly harder, although we await in the autumn the “official” estimates commissioned by the broadcasters of the outcome of the 2019 election under the new boundaries.
Labour’s chances of winning depend much more on whether and how the electoral geography of Britain changes at the next election. There are reasons for the party to be hopeful—May’s local elections saw support for the Conservatives fall most heavily in seats the party was defending, while some Liberal Democrat voters appeared willing to vote tactically for Labour where it looked best placed locally to defeat the Conservatives, both patterns that cost the Conservatives dearly. Meanwhile, there is now a realistic prospect of making gains from the SNP north of the border.
It will be winning where it matters, not the work of the boundary commissioners, that will primarily determine Labour’s fate at the next election.
