Westminster Blog

The proposals for reducing the number of Scottish MPs in Westminster by seven seats, put out to consultation today by the Scottish Boundary Commission, does the Government no favours.

The FT’s initial analysis of the Boundary Commission for Scotland proposal (which can also be seen on our interactive map) suggests both Coalition parties are likely to lose out, with the only Scottish Tory and three of the 11 current Scottish Liberal Democrat MPs likely to lose their seats as a result of the boundary changes.

Among the Lib Dems, this could provoke a tussle between party grandees Charles Kennedy and Danny Alexander, whose adjacent constituencies could be merged into a new “Inverness and Skye” constituency. Alternatively Kennedy, Alexander and John Thurso could all compete for the new seat of “Caithness, Sutherland, Ross and Cromarty”, which has boundaries cutting across all three MPs’ existing constituencies.

The opposition parties fare little better: Our analysis suggests that Labour will lose three of its current 41 Scottish MPs, and SNP will remain level at six, or, if using a different methodology, possibly lose one new constituency (Dundee East and the Glens).

The full list of proposed new constituencies, the existing boundaries they bisect and our projection of a likely winner is below. One statistical health warning: Our analysis is relatively crude. It redistributes the votes of the 2010 general election according to the proportion of the electorate of each existing constituency that falls within each new constituency. This assumes a uniform geographic distribution of the party support within each current constituency. In reality this will not be the case.