The principal principle

Three blog posts on the same subject on the same day? Time to get a life.

I am grateful to officials at the House of Commons for confirming that my analysis of procedure in relation to the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill is correct.

The Order paper for business on 6th September is now available and you can read it here. You can see that there are two amendments, one from Labour and a separate one from a group of Scottish Nationalist and Plaid Cymru MPs. So there will be a division. If enough Tories rebel the government could be in trouble.

Cornwall's six coalition MPs have already missed the deadline for submitting a Second Reading amendment to preserve separate constituencies for Cornwall. I wonder if this is an indication of how seriously they take the issue?

What it means is that if the Super Six really do want to save the Parliamentary boundary with Devon they will have two opportunities to vote to defeat the Bill on Monday 6th September.

I suspect, however, that for entirely different reasons they will vote for the coalition government - the three Lib Dems because they want a referendum on the Alternative Voting system, and the three Conservatives because they want a boundary review which will change future electoral mathematics in their favour.

It is possible to make a principled case either in favour or against both measures. But not if you want to save the boundary between Cornwall and Devon. The Bill in its present form looks like a dog's breakfast designed to hold the coaltion together, rather than make serious democratic reforms. Why not hold separate votes on separate parts of the Bill? But if keeping Cornwall's voters in Cornwall is really the principal concern of your MP, he or she should vote against the Bill on Monday 6th September.