Joined-up government

The proposals for a radical re-drawing of Westminster constituency boundaries published last week are predicated on two main arguments. First, they will even up the number of voters in each constituency (fair enough), and second is the much less convincing populist notion that we need to reduce the cost of politics.

Predictably, the losers in this exercise are not happy. Stephen Kinnock, whose Aberavon constituency would disappear, called it "barefaced gerrymandering", but Aberavon has around 45,000 voters, whereas Tory Cambridgeshire North West has roughly double that number.  A decision to stick with current boundaries really would be gerrymandering.

Overall, there will be 50 fewer elected MPs, but since 1997 Blair, Brown and Cameron between them appointed more than 630 life peers, with Cameron ("cutting the cost of politics") notching up more than 240 of them. That was an average of 40 for every year he sat in 10 Downing Street, and they can all claim allowances and expenses if they feel like travelling up to Westminster and signing in.

More patronage, less democracy and savings of bugger all.

If things weren't already bad enough for Labour, the boundary changes will make it all but impossible for them to win a majority in the House of Commons, no matter who leads the party, for the foreseeable future.


The changes will reinforce the overwhelming dominance of the prosperous, Tory-voting south-east of England over the rest of the UK. Wales, with less than 5% of MPs, will become even more of a political and economic irrelevance in Westminster than we are already, ruled permanently by a party three quarters of us did not vote for.

Neither Corbyn nor Smith nor anyone else in Labour has a solution to this. Their sat-nav has taken us down a single track road and driven us into a bog. Keep on voting Labour and sending a message to Westminster, says Lab-nav impotently, even though nobody in Westminster is listening, and the AA man no longer ventures outside the Home Counties.

Independence is the only way out.

But let's take a look at the proposals on a more parochial level.

Cenarth and Llangeler

Cenarth ward (that's Newcastle Emlyn to you and me), and Llangeler (that's Drefach Felindre in reality) jut out into Ceredigion at the north-west extremity of the constituency of Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. Neither Carmarthen East and Dinefwr nor the neighbouring Ceredigion constituency have enough voters to meet the target of around 75,000 electors per constituency, and so the Boundary Commission for Wales has shuffled the pack, played with different permutations and decided to take the two wards out of Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, lumping them into a new super-sized constituency to be called Ceredigion a Gogledd Sir Benfro.

Ceredigion a Gogledd Sir Benfro will take in the whole of Ceredigion, plus most of the northern half of Pembrokeshire (but not Llanrhian, St Davids or Solva), and a slice of Powys around Llanidloes.

Even with all that, this monster would still be about 4,000 voters short of the UK Government's target.

Reading through the Boundary Commisison's proposals, it becomes clear that this job was a two-stage process:

1. Rearrange the pieces, trying to create constituencies with roughly 75,000 voters in each.
2. Cast around for geographical/cultural/economic justifications as to why these pieces really do belong together.

Apart from helping to make up numbers, the justification for moving Cenarth and Llangeler wards is that Newcastle Emlyn has "very close links" to Adpar. So close, in fact, that if it weren't for the county border, they would be the same place.

Carmarthen East and Dinefwr would be renamed Caerfyrddin and acquire the chunk of western Carmarthenshire (Carmarthen, Whitland, St Clears, Laugharne, etc.) which is currently bolted on to the very different southern half of Pembrokeshire.

It is true that Newcastle Emlyn has more in common with Ceredigion than it does with Carmarthen, 17-ish miles and half an hour away along some scenic, but tortuous roads. 20 minutes if you put your foot down, break all the speed limits and don't get stuck behind slow moving lorries, expletive deleted horse boxes and pensioners heading off for fish and chips at Morrisons.

But this is Britain where reform always means a bit of sticking plaster, string and a few nails applied to give an extended lease of life to some knackered, moribund concept, like the unfair and undemocratic First Past The Post voting system.

The Boundary Commission's recommendations are for Westminster seats only, so we will end up in different constituencies for Westminster and Assembly elections, while remaining part of Carmarthenshire for local government purposes. Apart from anything else, that will create an organisational nightmare for the political parties.

The risk to small areas such as Cenarth and Llangeler in these changes, detached from one constituency and bolted on to another, is that we will fall through the cracks and end up in a kind of political no man's land.

In addition to that change, and as a result of a completely separate exercise in boundary tinkering, Cenarth and Llangeler wards are due to merge to create a single, 2-member ward spread over a large, deeply rural swathe of territory for county council elections.

Just as with the Westminster proposals, the result will inevitably weaken the link between voters and their elected representatives.