I haven't had chance to post since the House of Lord debacle, but last week Nick Clegg announced that he would get all our MPs to vote against boundary changes. I fully support this decision.
Firstly the coalition agreement cannot be taken in isolation the argument that that the Boundary changes is linked to the AV referendum is spurious. If you agree to a contract where you provide a specific amount of work and then you don't do all the work then the employer is likely to deduct some of your potential earnings. We can't have a deal where one party loses on the whim of another.
As a party we were going to be criticised for either been petulant or being a doormat - it's better to be petulant who gets something that we want (or in this case stops something we don't want) than viewed as weak. A message had to be sent.
The Boundary changes would have cost us MPs. We retain a large number of our seats because of the personal votes of our MPs. Bringing in new areas would have diluted these personal votes. Additionally what has happened in the way we campaign and target is that many of the wards around marginal seats have seen minimal activity as we target resources at our key parliamentary seats.
As I said in the pub at the weekend - do you think we would be turkeys voting for Christmas? After nearly a century where the Great British constitution has continually damaged us do you think we we would actually vote to make it harder for ourselves? We are re daft but not that daft.
