One Person, One Vote

Writing about the representation of the UK Parliament, reminded me of some work i did in 2014, when looking at the results of the last European Parliament elections. The chart below shows the number of people represented by an MEP by country, the Spanish are the least represented and the Luxembourgois the best, varying from 850,000 to 77,000; that’s eleven times better for Luxembourgois. It should be noted that the 77,000 population it takes to earn an MEP in Luxembourg is similar to the number that the Tories propose for British MPs, except the Tories are planning that MPs only represent electors, not the total population.

votespermep-chart

We can see that the system benefits the smaller nations, and that to be fair with the same rate of representation as the Luxembourgois there would need to be over 6,500 MEPs. It would be very difficult to run plenary sessions of such size as the amount of time available to talk would mean that many would have to remain silent. …

Parliament

Someone finally agrees with me, in that the constituency gerrymandering currently going on in Parliament starts from the decision to reduce the number of MPs. Ralph Scott in the New Statesman introduces me to the paper written by Lewis Baston and Stuart Wilks-Heeg showing that the UK has less elected politicians than most OECD states; this is mainly due to the fact that most of the comparator nations have large and active local government layers but also by measuring the ratio of MPs to population, looking at this via a per capita lens changes the perspective. While I admire Corbyn and Ashworth’s line that the Tories are ignoring 2m new electors who registered for the referendum, it is equally powerful to argue that we need more MPs; each of them can know their constituents on a closer basis and the Government will be held to account more effectively. Scott also argues that the representative work of 21st Century MP requires far more work than was the case even 40 years ago when the numbers were last revised. Also we can’t allow the hypocrisy of a Tory Government reducing the cost of representative democracy while stuffing the House of Lords full of cronies, mates and donors pass uncommented on. …