Why should some Scottish votes be worth up to 3.5 times more than English ones?

A Facts4EU.Org exposé of current parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom

Post-Brexit, isn’t it time to ‘level up’ democracy in the UK?

The simple fact is that if you voted in the last UK general election in December 2019, your vote had a wildly different value based on where you lived in the United Kingdom.

Ahead of the Scottish Parliament elections in six weeks’ time, Facts4EU.Org looks at the state of parliamentary democracy in the post-EU era in the UK as a whole.

The Westminster Parliament remains the sovereign parliament in the United Kingdom, following the decision of the Scottish people to stay in the Union in their “once in a generation” referendum of 2014. In this report we review democracy in respect of the United Kingdom Parliament and consider one key metric:

How much is your vote worth?

The simplest way to measure this is to look at how many people in each constituency are eligible to vote for a Member of Parliament to represent them. In principle, it might be thought that each of the 650 MPs should represent broadly the same number of voters.

Not only is this not the case it is in fact a long way from reality. We examined the official data on the size of the electorates for each constituency across the UK in the 2019 general election and our findings are below.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The top 10 and bottom 10 places to live in the UK, for the power of your vote

Top 10 constituencies

Na h-Eileanan An Iar (the Western Isles)
Orkney and Shetland
Arfon
Dwyfor Meirionnydd
Aberconwy
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
Montgomeryshire
Wrexham
Rhondda
Blaenau Gwent

Bottom 10 constituencies

(England) Isle Of Wight
(England) Bristol West
(England) West Ham
(England) Milton Keynes South
(England) North West Cambridgeshire
(England) Sleaford and North Hykeham
(England) Bermondsey and Old Southwark
(England) Hackney North and Stoke Newington
(England) Manchester Central
(England) Poplar and Limehouse

The SNP MP Angus MacNeil in the Western Isles won his seat at Westminster by garnering a total of just 6,531 votes
The Conservative MP Bob Seely in the Isle of Wight won his seat at Westminster by securing 41,815 votes
In terms of representation, a vote in the Western Isles is worth 3.5 times more than a vote on the Isle of Wight
Angus MacNeil's winning votes in Scotland would barely have kept his deposit in the Isle of Wight

If you're English, your vote is worth less than if you live in Scotland, Wales, or N.I.

The UK Parliament service does not give a summary of the average size of constituencies in each of the four nations of the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It does so for the latter three, but not for England. The Parliament service chooses to break England into regions and then give averages for each region.

Facts4EU.Org felt that readers might wish to know the average size of a constituency in each nation, giving England a comparable status to the other nations, and the results of this analysis are below.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

How much more is your vote worth in each of the UK's four nations?

The percentage worth of an average Welsh vote compared to an average English vote : +29.1%
The percentage worth of an average Scottish vote compared to an average English vote : +9.0%
The percentage worth of an average Northern Irish vote compared to an average English vote : +4.1%

Note: The official flag of Northern Ireland is the Union Jack, so this is what we have used in the chart above.

If the UK Parliament represented the four nations' electorates numerically, how many MPs would each nation have?

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

If Parliament represented the four nations' electorates equally, this is how the seats would change

England: +12 seats
Scotland: -4 seats
Wales: -8 seats
Northern Ireland: No change

What is the Boundaries Commission doing?

Every five years the Boundaries Commission has reported on the size and coverage of parliamentary constituencies. In December Royal Assent was given to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020. This new legislation makes amendments to the process for the next and subsequent Parliamentary constituency boundary reviews. Amongst the changes were:

Restoring the total number of constituencies to 650 (reviews since 2011 were required to be based on 600)
Adding an additional ‘protected’ constituency, i.e. not subject to the general requirement of a minimum and maximum electorate that they can recommend, of Ynys Môn (Anglesey)

None of this is relevant, of course, unless a government acts on the recommendations which the Boundary Commission presents, which is becoming extremely rare.

Observations

Whenever we research and publish a report such as the one above we are accused of 'nationalism' by - ironically - nationalists. All we have done is to try to present summary information on the parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom, to inform the debate.

Our readers come from all across the UK, and from many other countries. The Brexit Facts4EU.Org team is the same. There is no question in our minds that democracy is much safer in the United Kingdom than it is in the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels, but this does not mean that we should not constantly seek to improve.

Democracy - served best with the consent of the majority in all nations

Clearly the size of constituencies in the UK in terms of the number of their registered voters is a crude measure but it is nevertheless important. People should feel that their vote is broadly worth the same, no matter where they live in the United Kingdom.

In a sense, the Boundaries Commission has an impossible task. They have to look at a great many factors, including local authority boundaries, people's sense of identity in given areas, and the matter of physical geography. That said, for the people of the Isle of Wight to know that the people of the Western Isles (now known as Na h-Eileanan An Iar) have a vote which is 3.5 times more powerful in terms of representation in Westminster cannot be a comfortable thought.

Not one single English constituency appears in our analysis of the top 10 constituencies by voter power. Indeed only three English constituencies appear in the top 30, yet England has by far the largest population of all four nations.

Democracy and freedom have been hard fought over for centuries. Our Union has been in existence for over 300 years. Surely the United Kingdom needs more of what the EU calls a ‘level playing field’ for English people when it comes to parliamentary representation?

Democracy might be much healthier in the UK than in the EU machinery of Brussels, but in this post-Brexit world perhaps ‘a refresh’ would not be a bad thing.

Where would we be without you, our readers?

Producing reports like the one above take time and they are unique. No-one at the BBC seems to be the least bit interested in investigating and revealing information like this to the public. If fighting for British sovereignty and freedom is important to you, please read on.

We are most grateful to readers who have donated so far this year, but we badly need more readers to do the same if we are to continue in our sixth year - researching facts, scrutinising, publishing, and lobbying MPs. Quick, secure, and confidential donation links are below this article, or you can use our Donations page here. 10 readers donating £500 per month, or 50 readers donating £100 per month, or 1000 readers donating £5 per month - on top of the one-off donations and monthly donations we currently receive, this would just about keep us going. If you have never donated before, please, please, keep us going with a donation now. Thank you so much. You will receive a personal 'thank you' email from a member of the team, but you will not be badgered by us for more funds, unlike some organisations!

[ Sources: UK Parliament service | ONS ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sat 27 Mar 2021

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Reader Comments 8

1. Whistling Away , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 07:30:

Luckily for the rest of the UK, we have our own questions.
Here are a few as I make a bowl a porridge:
The recent bill that criminalises protesting - is that democratic?
Is it democratic to write new voter restriction laws - when they are no real reasons to?
Or how about the practice of only funding the areas that voted for the Tory party?
Surely, the suppression of an intelligence community report on cyber tampering
during the referendum & election is as far as one gets from democracy.No?
Awarding contracts along party lines - that's got to be undemocratic, if not criminal.
The frontpage of papers worldwide saw uk cops roughing up women
during a virgil - all because a cop murdered a woman. I guess that's not the optic democracy hoped for.
You keep having no questions in your minds & we'll keep having many in ours - how about them apples?

2. Old Albion , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 07:35:

England has NO Democracy. Since 1998 when Blair introduced Devolution, England had been sidelined. Apart from various attempts to chop it into artificial regions of course.
Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland have their own elected Parliament, looking after Devolved affairs. England has nothing, just the Westminster UK Parliament which has MP's from Scottish, Welsh and N.Irish seats voting on English affairs. Something English seat MP's cannot reciprocate.
The Democratic defecit is a lack of an English Parliament.

3. Perfidious Albion , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 08:42:

2. Why don't you do like last time - have an advisory referendum & then selectively opt to take that advice only if the outcome is an exit out of that union.
It's worked once before & so much easier than trying to fix things.

4. Gazzablack , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 09:03:

4 Perfidious Albion - it's amazing how referendums become merely "advisory" when you don't get your desired result.

5. Andy , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 10:25:

If you take Rhondda and block it together with any neighbouring seat you still would not get the same number of electors as the Isle of Wight.
They should use the Isle of Wight as a template and every seat should have 110000 +/- 5% electors regardless of geographic size.

6. Julie Dyson , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 11:36:

Fascinating article, a very informative eye-opener: I knew the scales were uneven but truly had no idea of just how unfairly weighted things actually are. If this were seen to be fairer overall I suspect there would be far less of a growing clamour for true proportional representation - the merits of which I am still wholly unconvinced of, judging purely by how that has turned out in some continental countries.

7. kb , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 14:15:

Is there not a clause in the Treaty of Union which guarantees Scotland a certain number of MPs in the UK parliament?

8. One eyed king , Sunday, March 28, 2021, 09:16:

Why should any vote be worth more

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