STV for the Mersey area

That's Liverpool, Wirral and Wigan too. A lot of these places have piers.

I’ve created a map with quite a few STV constituencies for this one

Liverpool (to elect 5 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Liverpool Garston; Liverpool Riverside; Liverpool Walton; Liverpool Wavertree; Liverpool West Derby )

Sefton (to elect 3 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Bootle; Sefton Central; Southport)

Wirral (to elect 4 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Birkenhead; Ellesmere Port and Bromborough; Wallasey; Wirral West)

St. Helen’s (to elect 4 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Knowsley; St Helens North; St Helens South and Whiston; Widnes and Halewood)

Wigan & Warrington (to elect 5 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Leigh and Atherton; Makerfield; Warrington North; Warrington South; Wigan)

Lancashire South (to elect 3 MPs, covering the current constituencies of Chorley; South Ribble; West Lancashire)

The Geography

Liverpool gives its name to five constituencies in the current FPTP plan, and except for about 3 housing estates placed in the West Derby constituency, but in Huyton and thus Knowsley Borough, they are all within the city. That made for an easy choice for an STV constituency.

Bootle, rather like Huyton, looks like a continuation of Liverpool to the uninitiated map gazer but I’d be happy to take direction from locals if they wanted to assure me on its independence. For the local authority, its joined in Sefton borough by other places up the coast like Crosby, Formby, and Southport, along with Maghull a little in land. Three constituencies have covered this territory for a while now, and fit together as a 3 MP STV region.

Over the Mersey is the Wirral, which doesn’t have quite the population for 4 current constituencies, so the Boundaries Commission have moved in Ellesmere Port from West Cheshire. Taking my guidance from the Commission, the town will share four MPs with the rest of the peninsula.

My St. Helen’s Constituency should perhaps also have Knowsley in the name since it includes all that borough except for that small part added to Liverpool. Then again, it also includes Widnes, the northern half of Halton borough, and I aim for shorter names where I can.

Wigan and Warrington are not really part of ‘Cultural Merseyside’, The towns and the area between them are the western arm of Rugby League country, along with St.Helen’s. The area is crossed by a lot of rail routes, from north to south and east to west.

The last part of the map, as the name suggests, is the last part of Lancashire to be covered. In the West Lancashire constituency are places like Skelmersdale and Ormskirk. Skem is part new town and its layout on the map looks rather like its southern counterparts like Crawley and Harlow. In an area full of railway lines, they seem to have passed Skem by. In contrast, South Ribble (Leyland) and Chorley seem like better connected places just south of Preston

The Politics

I read somewhere that Liverpool once had double the number of constituencies, but my research to back that up came up with another startling fact for the modern observer - It used to be a Tory city. Those days, when sectarianism was a factor, were long past when I was a student and in this century not even the ‘red wall collapse’ reached here. Liberal Democrats have done well in council elections in the past and held one seat in the city in the 80s under the old party name, but now its a blanket of red. Liverpool Labour politics has had quite a vicious reputation at times, as shown in the 1990’s drama G.B.H and the more recent resignation by Lucinda Berger, who left the city and the party but has since returned, to the party at least. STV elections in Liverpool are likely to still see at least 3, probably 4 Labour MPs elected since their vote shares are 60+% - but that may not make them less fractious. Assuming they don’t take all five, which would be some achievement under STV, the last could be anyone’s. Even the old Liberal party are still active, though I suspect the ‘merged’ party would take it.

The rest of region is equally red, but with milder politics and slightly lower vote shares. In Sefton, Bootle is no different to the City it adjoins, but up the coast, Southport used to be a Lib Dem/Conservative marginal. In fact, it was one of the 8 that the former held onto after the 2015 collapse, but time moves on and its in the Labour column now, albeit with a less than 40% vote share. A Sefton STV election would probably see two Labour elected. They wouldn’t be favourite for the third as voters of other parties might be more likely to show.

In my St. Helen’s seat, Labour would be nailed on for two of the four and be competitive for a third. Reform would fancy their chances of one.

On the Wirral, the northern end reflects the politics over the river with a Labour vote around 60%. Wirral West has a substantial Conservative vote though and they have held two seats at the Southern end of the peninsula in the past. Ellesmere Port will have taken one out of their reach, but they should be able to get one of the four Wirral MPs under STV, certainly in a better year for them, with two for Labour and the other one in play.

The Conservative encroachment into the ‘Red Wall’ in 2019 did hit my Warrington and Wigan constituency with a surprise gain in Leigh and Atherton, but surprisingly not in Warrington South which had been blue before. But that was washed away in 2024, and based on those results Reform UK would most likely pick up the first non-Labour seats. The Labour vote here isn’t high enough to take more 3 of the 5. Reform would take one of the others - though again, I’m assuming that second choices would be in similar proportion to first choices, and the few thousand Lib Dem and Green voters are less likely to opt second for Reform

Finally we come to my South Lancashire seat, which brings up a talking point which in turn makes my prediction game difficult. Chorley - one third of the area - is the current seat of the Speaker of the House, who isn’t opposed by the main parties. I find it curious that 25,000 people still turn out to vote for him. That’s not a comment on him as an MP or a person, but these people have been effectively disenfranchised.

Another reform I would suggest, along with the introduction of STV, is that the Speaker becomes a co-opted member of the house, and doesn’t have to stand in a general election.

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The Beatles were going to be my Liverpool Musical interlude, but I used them in the East Lancashire Post … so let’s celebrate the area another way