Shadow minister Jon Ashworth says the Conservatives are trying to ‘gerrymander the electoral system and to stack it against Labour’ [Image: Josh Kearns/Rex/Shutterstock].

They did it before the 1983 election, precisely in order to make it easier for them to win.

They tried to do it whilst in coalition with the Liberal Democrats – but the plan was postponed after disagreements between the two governing parties. It seems the plans would have meant the LDs losing a quarter of their seats.

Now the plans are back on the political agenda. The Liberal Democrats can no longer get in the way because their support for the Conservatives ensured that they lost far more than a quarter of their seats in the 2015 election.

So it seems the way is clear for the number of seats in the House of Commons to be cut from 650 to 600 from the 2020 election – with a Parliamentary vote planned to take place in 2018.

It occurs to This Writer that there remains at least one way for the plan to be blocked.

The investigations into alleged electoral fraud in the 2015 general election are still ongoing, but should be completed by mid-2017. If they reveal a significant number of current Conservative MPs committed crimes, then the Tories may lose their Parliamentary majority.

Protestations like Mr Ashworth’s – while accurate – will achieve nothing other than raising public awareness of a situation voters could have prevented.

Labour has urged Theresa May to drop plans for a radical redrawing of the electoral map after analysis … showed that boundary changes could affect up to 200 of the party’s seats.

Jon Ashworth, a shadow minister, accused the Conservatives of abuse of power and gerrymandering after the research, carried out by the Tory peer and psephologist Lord Hayward, suggested Labour would be disproportionately hit by the planned reduction in seats from 650 to 600.

The changes, initiated by David Cameron, aim to ensure that each person’s vote is of similar value by equalising the number of registered voters in each constituency to within 5% of 74,769.

But a higher proportion of existing Conservative seats are currently within the range, so only between 10 and 15 are expected to disappear, while Labour could see up to 30 of its seats abolished.

“This is about deliberately damaging Labour’s prospects at the next general election, and that’s why it’s shoddy,” Ashworth said. “Theresa May should drop these plans.”

Source: Labour accuses Tories of abuse of power over boundary review | Politics | The Guardian

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