CORNWALL BOUNDARIES MAP

Change in constituency boundaries is probably unlikely to happen now but you might like to see what the current and proposed boundaries are: here’s a capital scrollable map from spatial analysis.

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CORNISH POLITICAL NATIONALISM: NOISE IS NOT NUMBERS

While I was away there was a county by-election on the Lizard and belatedly I look at it now.

The result was a decisive win for the Conservatives. The other parties fighting were Liberal Democrats and Labour. Mebyon Kernow, the Cornish nationalist party which calls itself the party for Cornwall, did not contest the election though it initially had a candidate who withdrew for family reasons.

Since the establishment of the unitary council in 2009 there have been five by-elections. Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Labour have contested all of them; MK two. The first two parties polled very much the highest proportion of total votes cast: Liberal Democrats about 39 percent, Conservatives 35, Labour 9, MK 8, all others 8. Of course, to a degree the party votes reflect not only how many seats were contested but also the nature of the places where the by-elections fall; a party’s support is not spread evenly through the county; and five is too small to be a pointer to the whole up for election next year.

Nevertheless, how did MK, the Cornish nationalist party, do?

As I have said, it fought only two of the five elections; Labour, not a popular contender party in Cornwall, fought all five seats. A party’s ability to actually field candidates and contest elections is perhaps an indication of its internal strength and reach. MK gained an average of 8 percent of all the votes cast in the five elections; that is, only about 2 percent of electors in those five seats backed the party. MK results in Camborne and Wendron are vastly different so I am not sure that averaging them is convincing. With that reservation, in the two seats it contested MK got the support of about 6 percent of electors.

Despite the capital Wendron result, overall there is no endorsement of Cornish political nationalism or MK by the people of Cornwall. There is no countywide upsurge of enthusiasm for MK and the party is not so far advancing on its overall 2009 result; where it stood, only six in a hundred people entitled to vote turned out to vote for it for the council that runs Cornwall. Cornish political nationalism is not supported by most people in Cornwall. Noise is not numbers.

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DEVONWALL REVISITED

The Devonwall question, playing out before the Boundary Commission for England, has thrown up some interesting claims about levels of support for the desire to keep constituencies entirely in Cornwall with no Devonwall seat in both Cornwall and Devon.

As I see it, the thrust of the claims is twofold: the opposition to Devonwall is widespread throughout Cornwall and that opposition is felt strongly. The basis of the opposition seems to me to be that Cornwall is unique, singularly different from other counties, and should therefore be treated accordingly.

Let me unravel this.

Numbers
Opposition is felt strongly. Yes, it is but people feel strongly on all sorts of matters – vegetarianism, war in Afghanistan, who should win a contest on television. Other criteria are required to weigh against the strength of feeling. Additionally, noise is not numbers and more accurately one should say some people feel strongly about the question.

Opposition is widespread, nigh universal in Cornwall. Well, assertion is not proof and the figures that are public do not support this claim. I earlier looked at the unimpressive public numbers in the roundup post Cornwall border. Very, very few of the roughly 430 000 adults in Cornwall have rallied or signed public petitions about this; of course I do not know how many have fumed privately or written private letters about it and the Boundary Commission will presumably tell us in time how many wrote to it from Cornwall opposing Devonwall. I am dealing here with public expressions of opposition. The most popular petition that I have seen got 453 signatures, the Saltash rally was poorly supported. At the public session of the Commission on 10 November at Truro the Western Morning News reported that “the room was near-empty for the daytime debate, with only around a dozen people”. There is no current public evidence of widespread opposition to Devonwall or even interest in the question among people in Cornwall. A few certainly feel strongly against Devonwall; most do not, or at any rate do not express any opinion, for or against. The current public evidence suggests that the vast majority of people in Cornwall are not engaged by this question.

Unique and essential
Let me now look at two particular arguments against Devonwall.

Cornwall is unique and special. I looked at this in my post Ubiquitous uniqueness. Yes, Cornwall is unique and special and so is every other place in England as the Lords debate explored in that post showed. Additionally, I think some of the Cornwall claims under this head are not so much to do with ideas about a unique county but rather are based on the view that Cornwall is a separate country from England, that is, they are expressions of Cornish nationalism.

The border is essential to Cornwall’s uniqueness. I have looked at uneventful crossings of the border in this post; by housing benefit, for example, where economic similarities between parts of Cornwall and Devon are seen as strong enough to make a common area for broad market rental criteria sensible. Recently I noted in the post Crossing the Tamar a report that “Somewhere in the region of a quarter of Cornish [health] patients do not go to Truro; they go to Plymouth” (Judith JOLLY, Lords Hansard 2 November 2011 column 1325).

The Cornwall/Devon border is regularly disregarded with no ill effect in Cornwall. I do not believe that these crossings of the border have diminished the reality of Cornwall and I do not believe that a cross-border constituency will either.

None of this affects arguments about the rightness or wrongness of cutting the number of parliamentary seats, of a five percent leeway, of crossing over perceived community boundaries: but these questions were decided, if not settled, by Parliament and are irrelevant in practical terms now.

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LIBDEMS SHRINK IN CORNWALL

A recent survey for Conservatives of opinion in some marginal constituencies, including two in Cornwall, has thrown up a mean average swing of three percent from Liberal Democrats to Conservatives in seats held by the latter where the Libdems are second in votes.

The two Cornwall seats are Camborne-and-Redruth and Truro-and-Falmouth. The results for these two seats are not given separately in the public scores but, assuming they fit the pattern, this means that the Tories should win them comfortably next time. However, bear in mind the next election is not due until 2015 and that’s a long way off.

Electoral calculus has the Tories winning these two even more clearly. In fact it shows them winning all the Cornwall seats. Of course we are likely to have new boundaries in 2015.

It will be interesting to compare these 2011 findings with the actual results of the next general election.

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LEST THE DAUGHTERS OF THE UNCIRCUMCISED TRIUMPH

Well, Mebyon Kernow (MK) has gone down to another defeat and I’ve reached the startling end of the biblical verse that I have used these last months to chart its electoral failures and those of political nationalism.

In the by-election for Truro council yesterday MK, with a good candidate, polled 144 votes, 12.2 percent of the votes cast. That means the party for Cornwall got about 3 percent of the electors to turn out and vote for it. This was a town election and even at this level MK loses.

MK, the party, has been decisively rejected by the people of Cornwall – again. It is not the party for Cornwall; its subtitle looks like braggadocio. I think Mebyon Kernow, the Cornish nationalist party, is looking like an ex-parrot of Cornwall.

You can track MK’s failure, and that of Cornish political nationalism, here:

Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice 17 June 2011

Publish it not in the streets of Askelon 27 May 2011

Tell it not in Gath 22 February 2011

32 vote for Mebyon Kernow 17 January 2011

I see too that Labour improved its take in the by-election. The party in Cornwall appears to be well out of the slough.

The turnout in the elections I have noted has been low. Perhaps that’s an uncast vote of no confidence in all of the parties and politics, a plague on all your houses. I think there’s a case for free delivery of an election leaflet in local elections as well as national ones. That way we can be sure that every voter sees what he can vote for or stay at home against. That way the well-heeled parties and candidates have some of their advantage shaved off. That way we might improve the turnout. We should give it a try.

Notes

Result of the Truro Boscawen ward by-election 21 July 2011: Conservative 469 votes, Liberal Democrat 322, Labour 246, MK 144; turnout 24.6 percent.

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph: 2 Samuel 1.20

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DEVONWALL REVISITED: NEW CORNWALL CONSTITUENCIES

A trans-Tamar constituency is set to be created as a result of the voting bill that roughly equalises the electorates in most seats in Britain based on the December 2010 registers, disregarding any under or over registration or actual populations.

Jackie South has at the blog allthatsleft looked at the arithmetic and geography and made some interesting suggestions for possible new seats.
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CORNWALL ALSO SAYS NO

The Cornwall result of the 5 May 2011 referendum on the UK voting system is:

Yes to AV: 51 184 votes (30.29 percent of votes cast)

No: 117 770 votes (69.71 percent)

Spoilt ballots: 279 (0.16 percent)

The electorate is 420 921 and the turnout 40.20 percent. There were no contemporaneous local elections in Cornwall.
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IS LABOUR’S CORNISH WINTER PASSING?

See addition 21 March 2011

Original post 12 March 2011
In January Jude Robinson won a seat for Labour on the unitary council, the party’s first. Now a few weeks later Will Tremayne has won a by-election for Labour for Redruth town council.

Okay, it’s a parish council, the turnout was very poor, the Tories and Liberal Democrats are unpopular, there was no Mebyon Kernow distraction, and Redruth should be natural territory for the people’s party as it once called itself.

Nevertheless, this is another win for Labour in a barren county. This victory will encourage the party to reach for more and encourage people to vote for it.

Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae, wrote Horace, frigora mitescunt Zephyris (Horace, Ode 4.7). Labour must hope this is so.

Oh, do not read the rest of the ode; it is not encouraging for any of us.

ADDED 21 March 2011

A poll by Marketing Means reported in the Western Morning News 21 March 2011 gives support for the parties in Cornwall as: Conservative 36, Labour 27, Libdem 18. The Libdems have dropped and Labour risen significantly but the sample is seventy five.
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LORDS LEAP THE TAMAR

Conservatives and Libdems defeat ‘keep Cornwall whole’

On 9 February the House of Lords defeated by 250-221 votes a ‘keep Cornwall whole’ amendment to the Parliamentary voting system and constituencies (PVSC) bill by Libdem member Robin Teverson.

In that vote 153 Conservative and 63 Liberal Democrats lords voted against the Teverson amendment. The bulk of support was from Labour lords, presumably a party decision. Only eleven Libdems voted for the amendment, mostly those with an association with the west country or Scotland. The debate and vote is at Lords Hansard columns 257-266. A breakdown of the vote by party is here, division 2.

During his debate Teverson made the familiar arguments about Cornwall being unique in several ways and claimed that the possibility of a Devonwall constituency “is something that arouses real feelings and passions in ordinary people, in voters and families, throughout Cornwall”. As I explained here , my reading is that while a few are very roused, the debate simply does not engage most people in Cornwall at all.

Tom McNally, a Libdem spokesman on the bill in the Lords, said that “there is strong evidence to support the case that constituencies can and do exist that contain more than one community with more than one sense of identity” and disagreed that “constituencies can create or destroy identity”.

Let me here also note that at Committee stage Norman Fowler, a Tory member, successfully moved amendment 66 to ‘keep the Isle of Wight whole’ (Lords Hansard 19 January 2011 columns 406-426).

On 9 February the Lords also agreed an amendment from crossbencher David Pannick that increases the leeway between electorates in constituencies from the government’s 5 percent to 7½ percent in very exceptional circumstances. The government argued, persuasively to me, that there was vagueness in what would count as an exception. The Commons could vote the new leeway down when the amended bill goes back to them but time is short if the bill is to become law in time for a referendum in May.

Keeping Cornwall whole, having failed as a principle to persuade most members, is now a matter of arithmetic. Can five or six constituencies be constructed with the 5 percent, or possibly 7½ percent, limits wholly within Cornwall? And if the Pannick amendment remains in the bill, will the boundary commission see Cornwall as an exception?

ADDITION 10 February 2011: This is a copy of the bill as it is now after Report stage in the Lords.
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CROSSING THE TAMAR

There were several amendments to clause 11 of the Parliamentary voting system and constituency (PVSC) bill which attempted to frustrate a Devonwall constituency, a constituency that would include part of Cornwall and part of Cornwall. They appeared on the agenda of the committee stage of the debate on the bill in the House of Lords.

Nothing came of any of them. There were debates and several members of the house declared their affection for and experience of Cornwall. Some of the amendments were withdrawn without debate, some were debated and not pressed to a vote.

So the present position is that the 5 percent limit on constituency electoral register variation remains – which probably means constituencies crossing county boundaries – and only the Isle of Wight is added to the two Scotland exemptions to the limit. The Tory Libdem government are sticking to the primacy over everything else of the 5 percent limit to ensure roughly equal sized electorates in constituencies.

It looks as though another attempt will be made to exempt Cornwall at the Report stage of the bill. At the end of the debate on Labour amendment 79A which exempted Cornwall and other named places and was not voted on, Charles Falconer, the Labour spokesman said: “…we will have to revisit Cornwall…we will obviously come back at Report with what may be a more honed amendment” (25 January 2011 Lords Hansard 25 January 2011 column 922-923).

NOTES

See the texts of amendments 68, 79,79A, 86, 87, and 88 affecting Cornwall here.

And while I’m writing about elections you might like to see Lords Hansard 26 January 2011 column 958 where the issue of second home electors was raised in the House of Lords.
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