According to the Echo, Conservatives are in disagreement over the proposed new parliamentary boundaries:
A FIERCE row has broken out between the national Conservative party and local Tory activists over constituency boundary changes.
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The Boundary Commission has recommended the Castle Point parliamentary constituency should take two wards from Southend West ? Leigh and Leigh West ? under new proposals.
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Tory councillors across Hadleigh, Benfleet and Thundersley and members of the Castle Point Conservative Association support the idea.
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This is because Leigh is a traditionally Tory voting area, so this would help Conservative MP Rebecca Harris retain her seat at the next election.
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However, the national party has appealed against the boundary changes and requested the Leigh wards stay in Southend West, with Castle Point taking on Pitsea South East ward from Basildon instead….
The outcome of these arguments will affect our district as well. The current proposals put Pitsea in with Rayleigh and Wickford ….
Meanwhile Labour campaigner Julian Ware-Lane is pretty scathing tonight:
….Noble motives have given way to self-interest in south-east Essex. No longer is it solely an issue of creating equal-sized, and fairer, constituencies. This boundary review must not allow a hint of a chance for Labour. Not only do the Tories want to alter boundaries, they want to fix them so that a Labour victory is the remotest of possibilities.
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Quite why the Tories are so nervous is bemusing. The government hold all eighteen Essex constituencies at the moment with only Thurrock looking at all marginal. Do they envisage a complete reversal of support after Essex has endured five years of this awful regime? Perhaps.
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I am trying to be impartial on the boundary review locally. This is easier when your chances vary between impossible to slim. Labour in Southend is not contesting the Boundary Commissions proposals. We favour a central Southend seat, and although this has not been given to us we do see that what has been proposed makes some sense….
Instead of giving Castle Point either Leigh or Pitsea, a third alternative would be to give it the southern part of Rayleigh…..
Julian Ware-Lane trying to be impartial? That will be a first then!
Chris
P.S.
Look out if you are viewing Labour blogs or websites – someone as impartial as JL-W may accuse you of being a closet Labour Party sympathiser!
Think how awful that would be for your current good repute.
Whoops – I really must stress I that am NOT a closet Lib-Dem in case you didn’t already know!
best regards
Colin
Julian writes a worthwhile blog that I am happy for onlinefocus to link to.
While I can see the argument for making the constituencies more equal in size, I am opposed to removing so many of them. I am totally baffled by why it has to be exactly 600. There is no logic to this. It simply appears to be a nice round number that our Prime Minister took a fancy to.
Having said that all those who have an interest in this should work together to make the best of a bad job and find solutions that cause as little disruption as possible to the public who want access to their MP, to Public services who deal with MPs and voluntary groups who build up a relationship with their local MP. To achieve this I think that things like public transport links need to be taken into consideration. Also keep the constituencies as close as possible to what they are now so as few as possible good working relationships as possible are severed.