Know your limits: the boundaries are changing
Image credit: Josh and Kaldari, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
You may have heard that there is a general election just around the corner. Do you plan to vote? Well, there are some important changes that may affect you.
The squirrel has written before about the new requirement to show proof of identity when you turn up to vote (CS11). Now we need to examine another change that is arguably more important and probably less well known. Constituency boundaries across Northumberland are changing.
If you live in Morpeth or Pegswood and expect to vote in the Wansbeck constituency then you may be surprised to learn that you are actually now in the North Northumberland (ie. Berwick) constituency. But it’s not quite that simple because if you live in Longhorsley or Hepscott then you are now part of Hexham constituency. If you live in Heddon or Ponteland and you have given up on voting because the seat has always returned a Tory, then now is the time to think again because the boundary changes have also brought Throckley and Callerton into the constituency.
The North East region as a whole loses two members of parliament as a result of the boundary changes. We can safely assume that one of these losses is on our doorstep because Ashington and Blyth are now combined in a single constituency. Northumberland will now return MPs for four constituencies: Berwick (including Morpeth & Alnwick), Hexham (including Ponteland & Throckley), Ashington & Blyth, and Cramlington & Killingworth. Each of these is reckoned to have an electoral role of around 75,000 voters.
At a time when trust in our political process is fragile at best, there is bound to be some suspicion that seats have been gerrymandered. Let’s not forget that Morpeth was once a ‘rotten borough’ that returned two MPs largely at the whim of the Earl of Carlisle.
However, the boundary changes have been proposed by the Electoral Commission which proclaims its independence from government and parliament. They tell us that the 650 constituencies in the UK parliament have been remodelled to maintain a variation of not more than 5% in the number of voters within each. It seems to me that there is still ample scope to fiddle around with boundaries, but you will have to make up your own mind on that issue.
Anyway, it is what it is, and you may now find yourself no longer voting for (or against) the MP you are accustomed to dealing with. You can find a map showing the new boundaries at https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/interactive-map/.
John Gowing (no relation to the Earl of Carlisle)