Maria Eagle MP A Strong Voice in Tough Times
Maria Eagle MP Responds to Boundary Review Proposals
The Tory-inspired boundary review is undemocratic, unfair and hypocritical.
Whilst my own Garston and Halewood constituency is proposed to be left completely unchanged by the initial scheme, the overall impact represents a transparent attempt by the Tories to rig the electoral system in their favour using the most spurious of justifications.
They say they want to ‘cut the cost of democracy’, and indeed cutting the number of MPs from 650 to 600 may save £12million. Yet, just as they intend to reduce democratic representation in the House of Commons by 50 MPs, they have massively ramped up the number of unelected Peers in the House of Lords by 206, at a cost of £34million!
They claim to want to see ‘fair votes’ by equalizing constituency size, but then they insist the review must be based on an out-of-date register that omits the 2 million extra voters added to the register as a result of the EU referendum.
The review had been expected to favour the Tories by mainly removing Labour seats. For example, on Merseyside the Walton constituency disappears and large chunks of Wirral South and West are merged into one, so that’s two Labour MPs lost in our region alone.
Labour will oppose this affront to democracy, and with only a narrow government majority in the Commons, Theresa May like David Cameron before her may struggle to ram this rigged version of democracy through the Commons. Perhaps then the Tories will stop abusing our constitution as though it were their personal property and we can start to build the cross-party consensus we need around our democracy.