Thursday 12 January 2012

New Welsh Constituencies a rough assestment.

To be fair  considering the remit of reducing the number of Welsh Constituencies 40 to 30 from the Boundaries commission have seemed to have made a decent fist of it and compared with a previous attempt, it at least seems to have kept communities together . Though in some cases the Commissioners have made a huge error such as including the Mountain Ash and Aberaman in the Rhondda (a possible boost for Plaid however ?) and anyone who has tried to cross the Mountain road which connects the two in Winter will know.It one of the first to close  when theres even light snow and in the past has ben closed for long periods due to landslides. Perhaps the creation of the new consituency may led to improvements though I doubt it.

From the Political Parties point of View  it seems Plaid will be quite happy with the new Gwynedd and Caerfyrddin seats and would not be worried about loosing they main contender status in Menai ac Ynys Mon and Ceredigion and North Pembrokeshire. Llanelli will be hard work however and the new Caerphilly and Cardiff North seat  means the longed for valleys breakthrough  seems further away.

For the Tories they lok to be losing  one of their North Wales Seats with the the ridiculously named North Wales Coast (Cant see that name lasting) and almost certainly one of the Pembrokeshire ones . Off the  3 Cardiff seat's  that will remain it is probable be dependent on the General UK political trends but for the moment they are down one.
For the Libdems  it will take some nuber crunching to work out if they are still viable in the new Cardiff Central and Penarth seat . The demise of Montgomery means they are unlikely to win this area back . leaving only the South Powys seat which they will have to fight it out with the to Tories
Labour will be the biggest losers , they appear to be seeing about some  of their valleys strong holds disappearing altogether including Islwyn  merged into the Newport Sirhowy Valey seat and the creation of the Heads of the Valleys (another poor name) from remnants of the Merthyr and Cynon Valley.and the loss of the one seat in North Wales.

So a rough calculation  if there was general election tomorrow could see the number of seats in Wales allocated as

Plaid 2/4 Current 3
Lib Dems 1/2 Current 3
Cons 5/6-Current 8
Lab 20/24- current 26

2 comments:

Owen said...

What's more interesting are the areas where two (or more) MP's from the same party will be fighting it out for a single nomination.

Huw Irranca Davies v Hywel Francis in Aberavon & Ogmore for example.

Possibly Ann Clwyd v Dai Havard v Wayne David for "Heads of the Valleys".

glynbeddau said...

Yes and theres others David Jones V Guto Bebb for the North Wales Coast.

Although age should be no detriment Anne Clwyd will be 78 by the next election so she will probably call it a day but then again Dai Havard saw his majority cut by a16.92 swing to the Libdems (the largest swing in Wales)so he can't be all that popular.