ORIGINAL EMAIL:
Dear Mr Heald,

I am writing to help you out, paying attention, is therefore, advisable.

Speaking in the Commons on June 22 you stated that:

Mr. Heald: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that the bias in the system at present is mostly accounted for by variations in size between constituencies throughout the United Kingdom? If we had an equal electoral quota that was properly implemented throughout the country so that constituencies were the same size we would have a much more proportional system and one that did not have the bias within it?

I know this was a while ago, but I assume this is still your view. I write to you, therefore, to save you from making such fallacious comments ever again. The boundaries are as biased against the Tories now as they have always been (or at least since the 60s). The electoral bias, against which you rightly protest, has also, to some extent been around since the 60s, but up until the 90s, it was negligible. Now it is such that to gain a majority of 2 in a general election, the Tories would need an 11.7% lead on the popular vote, which, let's face it, isn't going to happen any time soon, not even if Boris was in charge.

There is little need to go on, all the information you could ever want about how the electoral system screws you over is here, which includes a section especially for you 'The boundary question, or why Oliver Heald is a bit of an idiot'. Perhaps you'd like to respond. I might be wrong, after all.

Now, I know you "love first past the post", but your job is to look at these sort of things, and from your previous statements it's clear you haven't been doing your job very well. Eventually that sort of behaviour is going to get you the sack. So please read the report available via the above link, digest it and learn. After that you are free to go on loving FPTP (although you won't be able to reasonably chat nonsense about the boundaries anymore).

I, and I'm sure the author of the full 'Conservatives and the electoral system' report, Lewis Baston, along with many others would love to hear your response. You've seen what clinging to erroneous statements has done to David Blunkett (ok, he's got a top job, but he'll go down in history as a liar and a fool). Don't go the same way; it just isn't pretty.

Hope I have been of some use, and sorry if any of this is painful, that's just the way some things are.

Yours etc.,

Paul Davies

HIS RESPONSE:
Dear Mr Davies,

All serious commentators agree that the difference in the number of electors between constituencies gives Labour a large bonus from the electoral system. This was reiterated as recently as 6th October by Thrasher and Rallings. It takes fewer voters to elect a Labour MP and rural areas are disadvantaged at the expense of small urban ones. My suggestion of an equal electoral quota is fair, right and would be more proportional. In order to establish fair seats, it would be necessary to change the Representation of the People Act.

I agree that turnout, tactical voting and targeted campaigning are also important to the Conservative position.

I have read the report you refer to and attended the House of Lords' presentation chaired by Lord Alexander. The research was most useful. I have advice available to me from the experts at Conservative Headquarters who have a very detailed knowledge of each parliamentary constituency.

The current Loosemore-Hanby index shows 20.7 and favours Labour. 20 and above is considered disproportional. However, this picture is very different in County elections.

T and R say "one task for the new leader is to discover how and why the party succeeded so well in the shires yet failed so dismally at the national election."

The answer was not PR.
Oliver Heald

MY RESPONSE:
Dear Mr Heald,

Thank you for replying, it's always nice to get more than just a fob-off from within the corridors of the Commons. I also feel that I should apologise for the rather flippant tone of the original email, there are many avenues to provocation, and I suppose given that the chosen one elicited a response, any echo of effrontery was just about justified.

Anyway, as you rightly point out, the difference in size between Labour and Conservative constituencies favours Labour. As the report I mentioned stated, the gap is currently 9.1 per cent, having been 9.7 per cent in 2001 and 8.1 per cent in 1997. However, as the report also stated, and I as reiterated in my original communication, it was also 9.1 per cent in Labour's favour in 1974, when the overall bias was ever-so-slightly in the Tories' favour. In 1979, there was a whopping 13.9 per cent difference in constituency size, in 1987 it was 13.6 and in 1992 it was 15.0, all, again, in Labour's favour, yet the overall bias was nowhere near its current magnitude.

But stats are dull, even if they do make pretty graphs. Even children can spot lack of correlation between two sets of data, however hard our education system battles against such cheek. What should concern us, the partially-enlightened elite, is why this is the case, and ultimately, what can be done about it.

However, this can be a bit tricky, especially with respect to the state of your party.

"I agree that turnout, tactical voting and targeted campaigning are also important to the Conservative position."

Now by this, you could of course mean that you need to work on your New Labour skills of abusing turnout (impossible), tactical voting (very difficult) and targeted campaigning (tried and failed), but I'm guessing not.

I assume instead that by 'position' you mean 'stuck on about 30% of the vote and horribly disadvantaged in relation to Labour', although obviously it goes deeper than that – the second class status afforded to prospective Conservative MPs in Wales, Scotland and the metropolitan areas; the largely irrational and somewhat entrenched 'anyone-but-the-bastards-in-blue' sentiment… but you know all this already, and I'm sure you have plenty of solutions.

Unfortunately, there is very little evidence to suggest that one of those solutions, the "equal electoral quota" is actually "fair, right and would be more proportional." Or rather, that it would actually be at all effective on a scale bigger than adding about a relatively small number of seats to the Conservative total. This is even with a more radical scheme, such as the one you propose, the exact consequences of which are more or less unquantifiable – it all gets a tad complicated when you shift everything about and start to ignore natural boundaries, which in turn erodes FPTP's hallowed constituency link – btw, not as good as an STV constituency link. The most you can hope for, I'm told, via a Tory MP no less, is about 20 seats. This still leaves the overall bias sat well in the 'historic proportions' section. With regard to your info, it would be lovely to know about your sources – a mutual advancement of knowledge if you will; make the world more beautiful.

I don't doubt for a second that you "have advice available to [you] from the experts at Conservative Headquarters who have a very detailed knowledge of each parliamentary constituency." How else are you, as a party, supposed to decide which voters are important and which aren't? I can also think of few more time-consuming and soul-destroying jobs outside of the City, which is why I'm making this effort to help you with the boundary question.

You also mention that "T[hrasher] and R[allings] say "one task for the new leader is to discover how and why the party succeeded so well in the shires yet failed so dismally at the national election… The answer was not PR."

Would you mind clarifying what you mean by PR? We obviously need to be clear on these things. Various waterheads still think that electoral reform people are arguing for some sort of nutjob Israeli system. Even the foreign secretary spouted such nonsense while trying to defend his party's 'mandate'. Actually, to be fair to Jack, he was probably just indulging in some propaganda; he's dumb, obviously, but surely he can't be THAT dumb. Anyway, I digress.

It's an important point, because the debate, which, whether one agrees with it or not, one has to admit is an important one, often gets lost amid a sea of swill about failings of systems which no sane person is advocating, referencing everything from Italy to the European elections, and thus completely missing the point. One would hope that someone untrammelled by the falderal that goes with being part of New Labour would be able to debate the issues like a bright person, one who realises that 'the answer' is rarely one specific thing, not even if that thing is locking everyone up. PR, or more specifically, sensible electoral reform, can quite conceivably be part of the answer, and thus has to be part of the debate.

As you mention the shires, one thing I would very much like to know is how much effort you would make to sort out the electoral registers before equalising the boundary sizes. The Electoral Commission reports that under-registration is about 5 per cent in the shires, compared to 18 per cent in inner London. Getting these folks on the register won't make a jot of difference to the seats, I'm guessing – if one can't be arsed registering, I doubt they can be bothered voting either. It will, however, go a long way to equalising the size of the constituencies, reducing the size bias, but doing damn-all to your deficit against Labour. What then?

We are in agreement that the boundaries give Labour an electoral advantage, and, given that we both have eyes and cognitive abilities surpassing those of certain members of the front bench, we should be in agreement in noticing the fallacy in the statement: "the bias in the system at present is mostly accounted for by variations in size between constituencies". Simply. Not. True.

Thank you for your time. It would be great to debate this further, although not living in your constituency I realise I can’t make any concrete claims on your time. However, if you could spare the seconds, it would be marvellous. I promise it'd be fun.

All the best,

Paul Davies

P.S. something to decorate the office with:

Overall system bias: http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/images/bias.html

Difference in constituency size: http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/images/constitsize.html