Boundary review – Greens do pretty well
Boundary reviews are always a frighting time for MPs. You can fight for years to win a constituency, then have it dissolved in the blink of a commission. For the Green Party, whose work to win Brighton Pavilion has gone on for years, it was a potentially terrifying time.
But today’s results of the first commission show that we have little to fear in Brighton. Whilst there are significant changes to Caroline Lucas’ constituency, the proposed replacement is a seat we shouldn’t struggle to win. In the suggested new constituency of Brighton Pavilion and Hove, we won all but one of the council seats in this year’s local elections (an errant Tory who won the second seat in the ward – the Greens still picked up the first seat, and most votes). It will be interesting to see what local Greens think this does to the chances of winning a second seat in the city, but we certainly shouldn’t fear losing our one as a result of these changes.
Norwich South – the Greens second best seat – barely changes. All of the party’s strongest wards remain in the seat, and the small changes around the edges probably slightly favour the party (though I’m happy to be corrected by a local).
There was potentially a case for playing a defensive game in the next election: losing our one MP would be a disaster, and had the boundary review effectively de-selected Caroline, as it could have done, then we would need to prioritise fighting to win her the replacement seat. But if the boundaries stay roughly as they are proposed, then we should have nothing to fear from this. Which means there is space for focussed but ambitious expansion. I won’t go through the boundaries of other strong Green areas (because I don’t have time to dig through them all), but there are plenty of seats we could be focussing on next time around.
Richard – I’m sure we should be targetting both, but you aren’t comparing like with like – the local election results for the Greens in Norwich South was I suspect somewhere around 30% across the constituency…
hi adam,
the new lewes and brighton east got 16.6% green in the locals vs. 14.9% for norwich south – so possibly our new no. 1 target?
I was wondering whether the aim was to settle Brighton as 2 Tory seats and 1 Green, and that looks like what’s happened – does it mean that Kemptown drops out of a list of 12 or 15 potential Green seats? Brighton people?
Adam (McG) – does that not make East Belfast, where presumably half of South goes much more winnable? (And maybe even W. Belfast in the medium term…) Quite right on N. Down, though, but with his feet under the table, I’m sure our MLA will be well placed to hang on…
Hello,
Thanks Chris for the N. South stuff.
Yeah, in a sense Brighton is a mixed bag – it coiuld have been terrible, but the containment is a problem. Lots of other seats across the country to focus on instead though…
a6ruled – nope, no relation, though you aren’t the first to ask 🙂 Adrian’s Ramsays come from Shetland originally. Mine come from Perthshire.
UK Polling Report is out of date for Norwich South. The constituency doesn’t change. It would have been nice to gain Sewell ward!
Brighton is amazingly good: killer start is there are 21 Cllrs in the new constituency of whom 20 are Green and 1 Tory. Some say it’s designed to stop Greens taking a 2nd seat though by containing us in one! I’m not a conspiracy theorist on that one though.
i looked up norwich south 201 – any relation? (Adrian Ramsay)
13,000 former(?) libdem voters to go at too – all the best with that.
Glad to hear Brighton is alright after this gerrymander…
Over here, South Belfast is being carved into two, which is disastrous – North Down taking on parts of Newtownards might get us into trouble in the next Assembly elections as well…