The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has allowed himself to be sandbagged by his Tory partners in his otherwise laudable attempt to introduce a fairer electoral system, probably losing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for electoral reform.
Instead of introducing a separate bill on the alternative vote referendum, which would have been supported by Labour in a vote through parliament, the government has spatchcocked it together with the most blatant gerrymander of parliamentary constituency boundaries since the days of the rotten boroughs.
For generations constituency boundaries have been reviewed and adjusted by local agreement, not by central diktat. Local people have had the opportunity to object if community identities were threatened or unsuitable mergers with nearby towns or villages proposed.
Formal hearings would hear representations and a final decision agreed, if not always by total consensus then at least with broad support – a process that last time necessarily took fully seven years in England.
But the Clegg bill has unilaterally dumped this for a rigid two-year deadline in a straightforward fix, abolishing the right to trigger public inquiries and destroying a bipartisan system of drawing boundaries that has been the envy of countries across the world. So much for "big society" localism.
Where David Cameron spoke eloquently in favour of the current 650-seat Commons at the 2003 Oxfordshire boundary inquiry, the bill proposes an arbitrary and partisan reduction of 50 seats because it would hurt Labour the most. A steeper reduction would have abolished too many Lib Dem and Tory seats.
Most outrageous, Clegg has said they intend to redraw the boundaries based on the December 2010 register, which is missing over 3.5 million eligible voters – predominantly the young, poor and black and minority ethnic social groups. The problem of under-registration is greatest in urban areas, student towns and coastal areas of high social deprivation – all very Labour. If all those eligible to vote could do so London would have fully eight more seats, now it will get five fewer.
In Wales the impact will be most savage of all. Wales will lose three times the proportion of MPs as the average for the UK: a reduction of fully a quarter, from 40 to 30. Whereas in Scotland, three geographically large, Liberal-held constituencies are conveniently excluded from the reform, in mid- and west Wales where there are many thousands more sheep than people, four geographically large seats will become two monster ones. Former coal-mining seats will be merged, forgetting the elementary verity of the Welsh valleys – that you cannot communicate with the next Valley by the shortest route (over the top of the mountain), you have to travel either to the top or bottom and go right around.
So what's the solution? Clegg should decouple the proposals into two separate bills. And he should ensure that the original, fairer, more transparent and consensual boundary review system is restored. That way we might get the alternative vote, which I have supported for decades and which was a Labour manifesto commitment.