Liberal Democrats gloomy over boundary changes

Liberal Democrat high command is talking about losing “a quite high single figure number of seats” as a result of the Boundary Review in England. Our analysis, commissioned from the political analyst Lewis Baston, suggests that it could be a loss as high as 10 in England. Factor in projected losses in Scotland and Wales (reports not yet published) and he estimates a loss of 13 seats for the Lib Dems.

Here are the seats he thinks the Lib Dems lose on the basis of the first draft of the Boundary Commission for England:

David Ward – Bradford East (to Labour)
Gordon Birtwistle – Burnley South and Accrington (to Labour)
Tom Brake – Carshalton and Wallington (to Con)
Duncan Hames – Chippenham (to Con)
Annette Brooke – Dorset Mid and North Poole (to Con)
Greg Mulholland – Leeds North West (to Labour – narrowly)
Norman Baker – Lewes (to Con)
John Leech – Manchester Withington (to Lab)
Mike Hancock – Portsmouth South (to Cn)
Paul Burstow – Sutton and Cheam (to Con)
Tessa Munt – Wells (to Con)
Tim Farron – Westmorland and Lonsdale (to Con)

That’s 12, I know. But Lewis Baston is predicting two gains – Hull North and Richmond Park. The Lib Dem high command would argue that where the numbers suggest a narrow loss – as in Tim Farron’s seat on our analysis – you should not underestimate the ability of the incumbent MP to work like crazy to woo the newly added voters. And that’s a fair point. We are a quarter of a way through the Coalition’s intended life. There is time to work new wards. But there are also plenty of gloomy Lib Dem faces around (as well as Tory and Labour ones). MPs (usually) cope with getting made redundant by the voters but always hate it when the P45 appears to be handed out by some faceless technocrats.

Tories expect the squabble amongst sitting Tory MPs for the best prime safe seats to get nasty. Some Lib Dems wonder how on earth they ended up trading a Tory demand for a combined “seats cut/boundary review” package for the AV referendum that bombed. Some Labour MPs reckon their chances of ever governing alone just got significantly worse.

The Tories appear to have nudged forward their chances of governing alone. Factoring in projections for Scotland and Wales, our projection suggests that the 2010 election would see them with 296 rather than the 306 seats they won last time round. But the finishing post you need to pass to get an overall majority in the Commons falls (with the cut in MPs’ numbers) from 326 to 301, so they would be within 5 MPs of a majority not the 20 seats short they were in 2010.

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