Thread by @NeilHarding

A lot of myths about Tories "equalising" constituences with 5% variation in registered electorate, & normally the 26,000 Scottish Highlands seat & 110,000 Isle of Wight seat are cited. But this review still leaves them outsized & 99% of seats are currently within 20% variation...

95% of seats are currently within 10% variation.

Why not 5%, I hear you ask- because the largescale disruption at each review is unworkable. The constituency link means an ability to re-elect an MP. But the knock on disruption of 5% means boundaries will chanhe your MP not votes

It will not last more than 2 reviews before it becomes clear it is ridiculous for voters to find their MP changes after every election due to boundary changes.

Also never mentioned is that Labour seats actually contain more people because....

..the number of eligible but unregistered is twice as high in Labour seats. Urban seats are poorer & more transient so more are taken off register. Tories always use the purged figures in December well away from elections, so registration at its lowest...

And individual registration has made the purged figures worse. Boundaries are now drawn with 7.5m eligible voters missing from registration figures...

With have a system where Labour candidates regularly come second in similar sized seats with more votes than Tories won with elsewhere. Here are some examples;

Telford
Electorate 68106
Labour coming 2nd with 21057 votes

Walsall North
Electorate 67308
Tory elected with 18919

Chipping Barnet
Electorate 77218
Labour 2nd with 25326 votes

Thurrock
Electorate 78154
Tory MP elected with 19880 votes

And we have a system where in equal sized seats Labour MPs can amass huge votes while Tories are elected with much less.

Liverpool West Derby
Electorate 65164
Labour MP elected with 37371 votes

Aberdeen South
Electorate 64964
Tory elected with 18,746 votes

So in short, the problem is not variation in seat size, it is variation in the number of votes needed to get elected.

This is why Tories can win 49% of the seats with just 42% of the vote, while Labour have less than 40% of seats. The boundary changes will deliver the Tories 51%

And if you're wondering about those few outsized seats where seat size does significantly affect votes for candidates

Bristol West
Electorate 92986
Labour 1st with 47213

Isle Of Wight
Electorate 110683
Tory 1st with 38190

Aberconwy
Electorate 45251
Tory 1st with 14337 votes

The Tory boundary plan to "equalise" this is to split Isle of Wight in half- so we get 2 Tory MPs elected, both with less than 20,000 votes each, while Labour continue to have MPs elected with 45,000 votes plus. Does that sound "equal" to you? Me neither! #BoundaryChanges

So while Tory MPs are elected with anything from 14,000 to 38,000 votes, Labour MPs are elected from 17,000 to 47,000, with dozens of Labour MPs elected with more than 40,000 votes.

The Tories boundary plan to "equalise" this, is to make Labour seats even bigger. Sound fair?

The simplest way to fix this, while still keeping the geographic link, is to allow candidates to stand in more than one constituency. The top 650 candidates with the most votes nationally are elected to Westminster. This will considerably narrow range of votes MPs elected on...

And the beauty of this, is it allows boundaries to truly reflect communities, boundaries can be smaller and vary more than 20% in electorate size, while delivering a proportional result and MPs elected with a similar number of votes...

Those candidates with a very concentrated vote can be elected representing a smaller area than MPs do now, while those with their support more spread out can combine constituencies & represent a slightly bigger area...

Election night on TV would be like a bigger version of the London Mayoral Election (Eurovision style) - with a scoreboard of candidates moving up and down the list as seats declared & no candidate in top 650 feeling safe until all their constituency results in their area were in.