Nothing gets politicians so worked up as a Boundary Review

THIS week, The Journal reported that there had been more than 900 objections lodged with the Boundary Commission over its plan to alter the face of the region’s one real rock solid Tory enclave – the parliamentary seat of Hexham.

The plans, drawn up last September as part of the government’s proposal to reduce the size of the House of Commons by around 50 seats, would see historic country boundaries crossed in the name of ‘equalising’ the size of constituencies across the country.

If the proposals go ahead, the North-East will see its overall representation in Parliament fall from 29 to 26 with no part of the region unaffected by the changes.

For some of the region’s MPs, it is likely to mean the end of the political road, while those that survive are will find themselves standing for re-election in constituencies almost unrecognisable from their existing ones.

In nowhere than Hexham has the opposition to the government’s plans been more intense.

All three main parties – including the Conservatives and their sitting MP Guy Opperman – have come out against the proposals, with the 950 letters of opposition equalling the number received in all the other 28 North East constituencies put together.

What the opponents of the changes find particularly galling is the fact that the proposed new constituency will breach the historic county boundary between Northumberland and County Durham, with Haltwhistle moving into a newly-created seat of Consett and Barnard Castle.

Other proposed new constituencies in the region – for example Newcastle North and Cramlington – will see the traditional divide between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas breached, although, perhaps surprisingly, these seem to have aroused much less opposition to date.

But the ongoing debate over Hexham could prove to be a microcosm of a much larger battle over the government’s proposals which could yet influence both the timing and the outcome of the next general election.

In my column last week, I speculated that Nick Clegg’s proposals for House of Lords reform could ultimately prove to the rock on which the Coalition founders, with Conservative peers, who want to maintain the second chamber’s built-in Tory majority, threatening to derail his plans.

What does that have to do with Parliamentary boundaries, I hear you ask? Well, potentially quite a lot.

For the Lib Dems are threatening to retaliate against the potential loss of their leader’s cherished Lords reform plans by scuppering the Tories’ attempts to reduce the number of MPs.

Now at first sight, you might think this was yet another ill-judged policy intervention by the Lib Dems that is likely to prove about as big a vote-winner for them as their support for the Euro.

Years of mounting public cynicism about politicians – capped by the MPs’ expenses scandal – have created a climate in which any party advocating a reduction in their numbers is likely to be on pretty firm electoral ground.

But politicians are never so exercised as when their own jobs are under threat – and for that reason alone, a Lib Dem revolt against the boundary review proposals could have a very real prospect of success.

A small number of Tory MPs affected by the changes – some of them only elected for the first time in 2010 and whose parliamentary careers face being cut off in their infancy – might even be persuaded to join such a rebellion.

This is not just about the Lib Dems getting their own back on the Tories, though. There is undoubtedly an element of calculation in the party’s stance.

It is estimated that the boundary changes will be worth an extra 20 seats for the Conservatives at the next election – some of which will undoubtedly come at the expense of their Coalition partners.

The changes will therefore make it much more likely that there will be a majority Conservative administration next time round, and correspondingly much less likely that the Lib Dems will again be in a position to hold the balance of power.

Killing off the boundary review might yet be the Lib Dems’ best hope of hanging onto their ministerial limousines. And it might even win them a few votes in Hexham.

The Coalition will not last five years

In last week's column, I suggested that the key strategic task facing the Liberal Democrats as they gather for their spring conference in Gateshead was to find a way of winning back the support that has deserted them since they joined the Coalition in 2010.

And doubtless there will be plenty of ideas floating back and forth at The Sage this weekend as to exactly how they should go about it.

They could, as some argue, stop the Health and Social Care Bill in its tracks. The Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee is among those warning this week that if they don’t take what may be their last opportunity to do this, it will seal their fate as a party.

Or they could, as Business Secretary Vince Cable has suggested, use their influence to help shape next month’s Budget, taking everyone earning less than £10,000 a year out of tax and introducing a ‘mansion tax’ for the super-rich.

Their leader, Nick Clegg, certainly wants to see the party getting on the front foot and proclaiming its successes in the Coalition rather than apologising for being part of it.

“Now it is time to move on. To stop justifying being in government and start advertising being in government. To stop lamenting what might have been and start celebrating what is. To stop defending our decisions and start shouting our achievements from the rooftops,” he said yesterday.

But whichever way they turn, will it make the slightest difference to the party’s electoral prospects?

Well, if history is any guide, no. The plain facts of the matter are that involvement in a Coalition is almost always disastrous for the smaller party, whatever political achievements it manages to extract from it.

The most recent example was the Lib-Lab pact in 1977/78. This was perhaps the most enlightened and humane period of government in my lifetime, but it still ended up doing the then Liberal Party terrible damage.

Far from emerging strengthened, their vote went down at the subsequent general election in 1979 and several of their most high-profile MPs, including the deputy leader John Pardoe, lost their seats.

Further back, the 'National Liberals' who joined the Tory-dominated National Government in the 1930s ended up simply becoming absorbed by the larger party.

And David Lloyd George’s 1916-22 Coalition, in which the Tories also held a numerical majority, likewise ended disastrously for the Liberals and their leader despite victory in the First World War.

It is partly for this reason that I have argued from the outset of the Coalition that, while the Lib Dems probably had no choice but to join it, they also needed to find a way of getting out of it alive – preferably well before the next election is due.

The Health and Social Care Bill, on which the Lib Dem rebels are more in tune with public opinion than the government is, would have given them a plausible pretext, although the party activists’ last-ditch bid to halt the Bill now looks unlikely to succeed.

Europe, by contrast, would not be a good reason for the Lib Dems to try to collapse the Coalition, for the simple reason that on this issue, it is the Tories who are much closer to the mainstream public view.

One less widely-canvassed possibility is House of Lords reform – not the sexiest of issues, for sure, but one on which the Tory ‘backwoodsmen’ seem almost certain to thwart Mr Clegg’s well-meaning attempts to drag the British Constitution into the 21st century.

The last time I discussed the possibility of the Coalition ending before its due-date of 2015, a commenter on my blog reminded me that the government has already passed legislation to bring in five-year fixed-term Parliaments.

My view, however, is that this could turn out to be no more than a quaint constitutional notion, given that the legislation also allows for a two-thirds majority of MPs to dissolve Parliament ahead of its term.

Let’s just suppose that David Cameron decides he wants an election. Would Labour MPs, in such circumstances, really vote to keep him in office until 2015?

It stands to reason that the Coalition will not last five years. It will, rather, last just as long as both of its partners want it to.

The real issue which the Lib Dem spring conference needs to address

Back in the bad old days of two-party politics, the Liberal Democrat spring conference was one of those recurring events in the political calendar which even political journalists struggled to get too worked up about.

Sure, the BBC invariably ran a short item about it – but that was only because its rules on impartiality oblige it to give Lib Dem gatherings the same coverage as those of the other two main parties.

How times have changed, however. Not only is this year’s spring conference in Gateshead a big story in the North-East, but it is also set to attract the kind of national media attention which the third party could once only dream of.

At stake could be the future of a flagship piece of government legislation – and in the longer-term, the future of the government itself.

Last year’s spring conference saw Lib Dem activists effectively force their Tory coalition partners to order a ‘pause’ in the controversial Health and Social Care Bill designed to hand large parts of the NHS over to GP consortia and increase competition across the service.

A year on, and this year’s may yet result in the hated Bill’s final demise.

Alongside Europe, the Bill remains perhaps the biggest point of division between the two Coalition partners, despite continuing attempts by both party leaderships to soften it at the edges in the hope of avoiding a showdown.

But even a desperate entreaty by party leader Nick Clegg and much-loved veteran Baroness Williams this week looks unlikely to head-off an attempt at next week’s gathering to kill of the legislation once and for all.

Unlike on Europe, it has been clear for some time that the Lib Dem tail is wagging the Tory dog when it comes to the NHS.

Earlier this week, Lib Dem peers put forward a fresh series of amendments to the Bill in the House of Lords designed to further water down the requirements for increased competition.

Initially, the government said it was ‘not minded’ to accept the amendments, but once they were duly passed, it decided not to try to overturn them.

At the same time, Mr Clegg and Lady Williams issued a letter to party members saying that the Bill as now amended contained all the necessary safeguards and should therefore now be “allowed to proceed.”

Early signs are, however, that activists are determined to press ahead with a conference vote on the motion, which calls for the "deeply flawed" Bill to be "withdrawn or defeated.”

One prominent Lib Dem, Graham Winyard, has already resigned from the party over the issue, warning Mr Clegg that his support for the bill would be "a slow-motion disaster" for the NHS and the party.

Labour has not been slow to seize on the divisions, with shadow health secretary Andy Burnham attacking Mr Clegg’s “stage managed posturing” over the Bill.

He urged Lib Dem rebels to work with Labour and dismantle the Bill to remove the provisions relating to competition.

But of course the Lib Dems’ problems go much wider than health. Their real difficulty lies in the fact that voters have deserted the party in droves since it joined the Coalition.

In this sense, it is ironic that they are meeting in the North-East at a time when the party’s standing in the region has possibly never been lower.

A poll carried out by YouGov the week before last showed the party now has the support of just 4pc of the region’s voters – lower than the UK Independence Party on 7pc.

The days when the Lib Dems entertained serious hopes of winning parliamentary seats such as Blaydon and Durham City now seem a very long way away indeed.

Under Charles Kennedy’s leadership from 1999-2006, the party pursued a successful strategy of appealing to disaffected Labour voters as well as its own traditional supporters, gaining its higher number of MPs since the 1920s.

It is now facing the nightmare scenario of its parliamentary representation being reduced to single figures for the first time since the revival of third-party politics began in the 1970s.

It is hard to dispute the analysis of Gateshead councillor Ron Beadle that, in electoral terms, the Coalition has been a “disaster” for the party.

This, not the future of the health bill, is the real issue which this spring conference needs to address.