THE Boundary Commissions for England and Wales last week published the details of their proposed changes to Parliamentary constituency boundaries.
According to Minister Chris Skidmore, “equalising the size of constituencies will mean all votes carry equal weight.”
But constituency boundaries are not the problem. The problem is our First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system.
In a multi-party democracy, it is simply not possible to draw the Parliamentary map in a way that makes all votes matter.
Wherever the lines fall on the map, FPTP ensures there are constituencies like Belfast South, whose MP was elected with 9,560 votes (24.5 per cent), while in Liverpool Walton, 31,222 (81.3 per cent) voted for their MP.
This is not because these constituencies are different sizes – they each have almost exactly the same number of registered voters – but because it is impossible for FPTP with single-member constituencies to ensure there is fair representation of a diverse electorate with a wide range of political preferences.
When you apply our broken voting system across the whole country, you end up with what we have: a Parliament in which a party’s share of the seats has little relationship to the number of votes they received.
Until we join the 83 per cent of developed democracies which use some form of proportional representation, Parliament will remain unrepresentative of the voters and our democracy will remain broken.
Nigel Hennerley Green Party High Legh
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