The Boundary Commission tyranny of numbers

As a follow-up to my previous post Malapportionment in the UK? I've noticed that the current boundary review for the Scottish Parliament is proving extremely controversial in the Highlands. Creating seats of equal size is sometimes not as easy as it looks.

The Boundary Commission's specific task there is to create three seats within the Highland council area with approximately equal sizes. "Oh that's simple!" I hear some people cry. But the proposals the Boundary Commission have come up with are proving incredibly controversial, with the latest outrage being proposals to remove Dingwall, the county town of Ross-shire, and the Black Isle and put them not in a Caithness, Sutherland and Ross seat but in a Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch seat. Ross-shire Journal: Electoral carve-up of Ross slammed as 'ludicrous' has more details.

Geography and natural ties are often the opponents of numeric exactitude in boundary reviews. One has to give for the other to be achieved. If the country is to have "equal sized seats" overriding everything else then some very arbitrary lines will have to be drawn, totally stamping all over concerns about local ties.

So who wants to volunteer to create three equal sized seats (even the current proposals have a variation of nearly 5000), nominate a set of boundaries and tell the Highlanders what has been imposed on them from afar?

Devolved power - or half power?

The news of Sir Ian Blair's departure has provoked a political row over who can "hire and fire" the head of the Metropolitan Police. I don't want to rehash the arguments both ways about Blair himself but there are some wider problems.

The biggest problem is that a lot of political power has been devolved (and yes, the Greater London Authority is a form of devolved power even though it is a metropolitan wide authority and not a "regional assembly" of the type devised as a sop to the English question) in a bad manner, with the result that in many areas power is now wielded by a hydra of national and devolved politicians. It's also a poorly kept secret that when the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Greater London Authority were set up the widespread expectation was that they would almost permanently be controlled by Labour politicians and that Westminster-devolved conflicts would be between non-Labour Westminster governments and Labour devolved ones, not the other way round. The result is that the executives have quite significant powers in their own right and are not so vulnerable to the problems of minorities in the assemblies or even an opposition majority as on the London Assembly.

But they are also probe to following a different path from Westminster. Now this is a natural consequence of devolving power and localism (although I wish the UK media would more accurately report the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly rather than just focusing on the supposed benefits of spending, stoking English jealousy). However when there are both local and national concerns - and the Metropolitan Police is not exclusively a police force for London but has various national duties as well. So it's not terribly easy to carve up accountability between the Mayor of London and the Home Secretary. It can work if they're cut from the same political cloth, but when they're not (and this applied as much to Ken Livingstone as to Boris Johnson) then clashes and divided confidence are inevitable. It's not a terribly workable arrangement in the long run.

Is there an obvious solution? It's a lot harder to separate out overlap services than is often thought (a problem that also comes up with Welsh devolution because of large numbers in the borders) or to arrange things so that the same party always controls all the relevant posts (and, as Ken Livingstone demonstrated and Boris Johnson will soon do as well, just being from the same party as the Westminster government does not guarantee unity), especially when so many elections are contested as a chance to make a mid-term protest against the Westminster government. It is often forgotten that the 2004 Mayoral election was the only time a London authority election was won by the party in power at Westminster since 1949. And even that was down to Livingstone returning to Labour rather than running again as an Independent. Whether this pattern will change remains to be seen, but it is not an encouraging precedent. So what is the solution?

Is Alex Salmond the new George W. Bush?

It may well look that way. The Scottish election had numerous problems and it now seems possible a legal challenge may be lodged. (BBC News: Labour may challenge Scots vote) In the constituency of Cunninghame North, Labour lost by just 48 votes, amidst numerous spoilt ballot papers. Defeated Labour MSP Allan Wilson may lodge a legal challenge.

I've just done the calculations (for those interested, the figures are at BBC News: Election Result: West of Scotland) and if the challenge is successful then it will totally reverse the numbers game in the Scottish Parliament. The top-up list seats in the West of Scotland region would remain the same - 4 SNP, 2 Conservatives, 1 Lib Dem (although the order of allocation would change slightly), so the effect would be to remove one seat from the overall SNP total and add it to the Labour total - giving Labour a one seat lead over the SNP (and also making some of the coalition numbers even tighter).

An SNP source ...described the potential action as "sour grapes".

On Thursday night the SNP were talking a lot about how damaging the voting problems had been. Now that those voting problems may have benefited them, they're labelling those who are seeking verification "sore losers". Why am I so reminded of Florida in 2000?

The decline of small parties

One quick further thought about the elections - small parties have been generally annihilated in both Scotland and Wales. The Scottish Greens have plummeted to two seats, the Scottish Socialists and breakaway rivals Solidarity have been wiped out, so have the Scottish Senior Citizens Party, a single issue "save the local hospital" MSP has lost her seat and another independent MSP retired. This leaves just two Greens and an independent Nationalist in the Scottish Parliament. In Wales John Marek lost his seat and although independents polled well in a number of other constituencies, only in the special case of Blaenau Gwent (facing its third election in two years) where recent wounds are sore did any smaller party candidate win.

So was the brief plethora of small parties just a blip? Are we seeing a return to clear-cut choice in politics?

The elections

Due to a mixture of exhaustion and illness I decided against a live blog and instead just watched the results on the television last night. My thoughts in brief:

* A lot was made by both Labour & the Liberal Democrats and BBC commentators that once again the Conservatives failed to win seats in Manchester and Liverpool. Whilst this is true, it overlooks the fact that both these councils are comparatively small, focusing on the inner city urban area and there are Conservative councillors (I was very glad to see that Iain Lindley was re-elected in Salford - Cllr Iain Lindley: Thank you!) and even Conservative controlled councils within the metropolises. The Conservative success in Birmingham was built up over time by working inwards from the outer suburbs - but Birmingham is a council that covers both inner and outer suburbs.

* The Conservatives now control 20 councils in the North, more than Labour. Blackpool was a particularly astounding landslide. Let's here no more of this rubbish that the Liberal Democrats are the only challengers to Labour in the North!

* The Conservative gains in the Welsh Assembly were encouraging, although the inanity of the Additional Member System, whereby some of the constituency gains merely cancelled out top-up list members, makes me wonder whether this system really responds to voters. Similarly some of the Labour losses were compensated by the lists. We now have a situation where Wales can either have a Labour minority administration, a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition or a rainbow Plaid-Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Much rests on what the Lib Dems decide, so it could come down to whether or not Michael German gets to be Deputy First Minister.

* Scotland looks scary - are we seeing the death knell for the Union? I hope that if the SNP form a government they will govern Scotland in its best interests and not run it into the ground just to stir up support for independence. But I'm sceptical.

* The huge number of spoilt ballot papers in Scotland is rightly concerning many. Having so many different voting systems at once, including some that are new to the voters, is a recipe for disaster. In 2004 London voters were given a first past the post ballot (for the constituency Assembly Member), an Additional Member System ballot (for the top-up list Assembly Members) which is not a second choice, a Supplementary Vote ballot paper (for the Mayor of London) which is a second choice and a party list ballot paper (for the Members of the European Parliament). I don't doubt many though the top-up list ballot was a "second choice", especially when they were given a second choice ballot at the same time. Similarly in Newham last year voters could easily have been confused by the council ballot paper (requiring up to three Xs) and the Mayor (requiring a 1 and a 2). Something needs to be done about the plethora of voting systems in this country, either by separating out elections or moving to using fewer systems. Would it be so wrong to scrap all the Additional Member System ballots and replace them with Single Transferable Vote?

* The English local council elections look encouraging. In my home borough of Epsom & Ewell the Labour Party have been finally wiped out of the council chamber, whilst across the country several friends have been successfully elected.

That's it for now but I'll comment again when the shape of the Scottish and Welsh Executives become clear.

So just who is in charge of the Lib Dems?

FibDems asks "Has anyone seen their leader?" It seems the Scottish Lib Dems have been subtley distancing themselves from Sir Menzies Campbell and are even looking to Charles Kennedy to head their campaign for the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections.

The first evidence is a modification to the Scottish Lib Dems' website that was made yesterday, removing the detail that the federal party is "led by Sir Menzies Campbell MP". One has to wonder why - it's hardly as if the page needs the space. Does Nicol Stephen not wish to be promoted with Campbell if he can help it?

And if Kennedy is to be used in the campaign is this another step on his route back to the leadership? He's hardly played down attempts to cast him as "the king over the water". And of course another king over the water fought against the Campbells...