Tory party chairman: boundary changes "mad and insane"

By William Green on Sep 13, 11 03:58 PM

Blimey. The fallout from the coalition's determination to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600 continues.

Tory party chairman Baroness Warsi has now promised the party would back appeals against proposed boundary changes.

"I agree with some of our MPs that some of the proposals are mad and insane," she said in a briefing with regional political journalists.

But at the same time, she warned politicians had promised to cut the cost of politics and so could not complain too much and that the goal was to equalise seats.

Her comments come after a blunt assessment from Labour's Nick Brown, a former Government chief whip and regional minister.

Mr Brown's, whose own Newcastle seat is facing radical changes, said: "At first sight, it looks like it has been done by a monkey on acid."

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2 Comments

David Clelland said:

So Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs are finally waking up to the impact of their policy to reduce the size of the House of Commons to 600 will have on communities.

This legislation is anti community and anti democratic. Anti community because it ignores community links and the parliamentary principle of community representation in Parliament. Under these proposals constituencies may as well not have names but merely be called divisions 1 to 600.

Anti democratic because although the numbers of People's representatives (MPs) is to be reduced, the size of government is not. Thereby increasing the power of the executive and making it more difficult for the House of Commons to hold the executive to account.

The Boundary Commission proposals should be thrown out at the earliest opportunity and this legislation stopped in it's tracks.

September 14, 2011 8:54 AM

Peter Huntington said:

Well it`s certainly not anti democratic David is it? Given that the changes are about equalising so far as possible the number of electors in each constituency. Or do you think it`s right that Labour has a built in electoral advantage of c7% because it`s votes elect more MPs? What`s democratic about that? Sure, some of the proposed chages are a little bizarre but they will be sorted out on appeal.

October 3, 2011 8:24 AM

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