In the last British general election 1.1 million people voted for the Green Party, which produced for them one seat; 3.8 million people voted for UKIP, which produced one seat as well; 2.4 million people voted for the Liberal Democrats: 8 seats; 1.4 million people voted for the Scottish National Party: result 56 seats. Meanwhile, the Tories got 52% of the parliamentary seats from 37% of the popular votes cast.
This is crazy and totally, well, undemocratic. A total of 7.3 million (25% of voters) are effectively disenfranchised, their votes worthless. No wonder there is disengagement from politics. The culprit is the British first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system and of a failure to embrace proportional representation.
In America the local politicians gerrymander the constituency boundaries and pick their constituents. In the UK an independent commission alters boundaries according to population densities, without political input (we are assured). Despite the commission, the results are unfair the UK and are unrepresentative in both countries. Epicurus didn’t like politics and politicians, but he did like a level playing field; and he was right.
I know the Boundary Commission is technically independent, and making constituencies equal in size is good, but there will be inadvertant consequences from the latest review. The urban North, a relatively deprived area, will lose seats. Wales will lose over a quarter of its seats, despite being the most deprived region in the UK. This wouldn’t be a problem if we had a government that cared about all the region’s equally. But we don’t, and so the changes combined with the likely outcome of a Conservative majority in 2020, will mean even less of an incentive to rebalance a horrifically unequal and over centralised country. The only silver lining is that the East End of London and Manchester- two very deprived places- look to gain seats, but that will be more than offset by the reduction in constituencies, making each one more rural and therefore more conservative.