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  • I think that by the time the next general election comes around, the Tories and DUP may well have succeeded in gerrymandering it and may succeed in keeping Labour out. One of May's key mistakes in calling the last election was that there wasn't enough time to put in place the gerrymandering planned by Osborne et al., so that it was still run on existing constituency boundaries and without voter ID. With these in place, I think it's very likely that Labour will lose. Here's a recent article on the subject:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/06/tories-id-voting-booths-labour-disadvantaged-ballot-box

    I'm sure the Tories are engaged in advancing the current Boundary Review, too.

    A popular movement might still cause a sea change, of course, but I think this is unlikely after Corbyn's warning shot across the Tories' bow.

  • To be fair Oliver, the electoral system favours Labour at the moment. Labour held seats tend to be smaller than Conservative held ones. It takes fewer votes to elect an MP in a Labour constituency and more to elect an MP in a Tory constituency.
    Labour have in the past played the boundary game better than the other parties.
    Though it's not gerrymandering on the US level just normal politics. The answer is, of course, a PR system, but the inept Lib Dems lost any chance of that happening for a generation.

  • I'm obviously not implying there isn't a need for ensuring electoral fairness, but as you know, the new plans merely continue the see-saw, and this time certainly in more dramatic fashion than before, which is why I shall continue to call it gerrymandering.

  • But in the 2017 ge, labour only got 2% less votes, but almost 50 less seats than the conservatives?

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