Proposed London Constituency Changes Revealed

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 137 months ago
Proposed London Constituency Changes Revealed

Your MP may change in an unexpected way at the next general election. The Boundary Commission for England has released its revised proposals for changing constituencies; it's been told to shave 32 off England's total (currently 650 MPs sit in the House of Commons. The whole country will lose 50).

London is losing five constituencies, with the capital moved around to fit rules that each one should have a population of between 72,810 and 80,473. If the proposals go ahead, the Cities of London and Westminster would be joined, Camden Town would appear in Parliament alongside Regents Park, Greenwich and Lewisham would be linked, there'd be a new constituency straddling the Lee at Bow and Stratford, and we thank @politic_animal for pointing out that the changes would see no seat with Woolwich in the name for the first time since 1885.

You can look up the changes online (handily stereotyped into different pages for north and south of the Thames).

Of course, the key phrase in this post is "if the proposals go ahead". This is a Conservative party policy, because the reckoning is that the changes would add 20 seats to the Tory tally. However, the Lib Dems currently say they'll vote against the plans in a very grown-up tit-for-tat response to the Tories scuppering Lords reform. So all this may end up being just a curiosity for the history books.

Photo by DaveD3S from the Londonist Flickr pool

Last Updated 16 October 2012