Changes to the boundaries of MPs constituencies will do little to engage a public that is already not participating in the local political scene as much as it should be.
Southwark is currently covered by three parliamentary constituencies: Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Peckham and Camberwell and Dulwich and West Norwood.
The new constituencies would be Bermondsey and Borough, Peckham, Dulwich and Sydenham, and Vauxhall and Camberwell.
‘Completely illogical’: Sir Simon Hughes speaks out against constituency boundary changes
As this paper reported last week, we are currently running a pilot scheme to encourage greater voter turnout in the upcoming May local elections. In the one ward that we are concentrating on – Newington in Walworth – the amount of people not voting is as high as 70 per cent. Many of them do not know who their local councillors are. More people are aware of their local MP, but by changing the boundaries there is a real fear that many more will become more confused and so even more disengaged.
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Indeed to have a new constituency in the south of Dulwich and Sydenham going from Herne Hill all the way down to Beckenham in the south east will feel alien to many in that part of our borough. And once more the people of Walworth would not be united, but would instead now be carved up into three separate constituencies. The whole thing is very confusing, even for those with a good political knowledge.
Both the former long-standing Liberal Democrat MP for the current Old Southwark and Bermondsey constituency, Sir Simon Hughes, and the current MP for the area, Labour’s Neil Coyle, are against the changes, so it would appear that neither of the two main parties is going to gain any political advantage from this.
While the current set up does include one constituency in the south of the borough that takes in both Lambeth and Southwark councils, the proposed changes would see our MPs having to work on more cross-borough areas. It is indeed far more logical for the local MP to be dealing with one council when possible. The changes are to do with population calculations, but it is not so significant that we should risk confusion and less effective engagement from both the MPs and the electorate.
People by and large identify politics at a local level with the services they rely on – so on a council to council basis. Further blurring the line between council politics and Westminster will only serve to make people more disengaged from the political process.
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