A common reaction to first hearing of the OneWight campaign, is “What do you mean they want to split up the Island? This is the Isle of Wight, not part of the mainland.”
The initial reaction is quite right. The Island has a strong identity and its inhabitants feel that with a passion. This definitely isn’t the Mainland.
Why is this question even being raised?
As you may know, the Government is aiming to reduce the number of MPs nationally from 650 to 600, while creating constituencies of more equal sizes (around 76,000).
As there are approximately 110,000 residents registered to vote on the Island, the currently proposed changes would mean that ~34,000 voting constituents on the Island would be ‘left over.’
The OneWight campaign says these people would be joined with a part of the Mainland, leading to the potential that alongside the MP for the 76,000 Islanders, an additional MP on the Mainland would represent some people over there (40,000) and the rest of their electorate would be made up with the 36,000 Islanders.
OneWight summarises it like this – “In short, the plan is poorly thought out, will damage democracy and is against the interests of the Island and Islanders.”
To date, the campaign has gathered 13,000 signatures.
Should we only have one MP?
The OneWight campaign seeks to put pressure on the Government by gathering signatures for a petition that states that none of the Island be merged with a mainland constituency and that “the Isle of Wight benefits from exceptions similar to those applied to Scottish Islands with no physical link to the mainland.”
These Scottish Islands have a single MP, even though they have small populations.
The petition text doesn’t directly specify if there should be one MP or more. When we’ve spoke to the members of the OneWight team, they’ve told us that they don’t think that there would be more than one MP.
Given this, the outcome if the OneWight campaign is successful, would be that things don’t change and that the Island would continue to be represented by a single MP. Presently, the Conservative, Andrew Turner.
Do Islanders choose to be “Under-represented”?
With the way that things stand at the moment – and would remain if the OneWight campaign is successful – each person’s vote on the Isle of Wight is worth around a third less than the vote of other people in different areas of the UK.
To break it down – if one MP represents 110k people (as Mr Turner does), each of those voters have 1/110k-th of influence in the House of Commons. In an area where an MP represents 76,000 voters, their influence is 1/76k-th.
The Island voter has 30% less influence. (Lots more details are available on Voter Power, where they say, “In Isle Of Wight, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.077 votes.”)
Island voters are under-represented, as was pointed out by Conservative John Maples in a House of Commons debate in 2005, where he concluded “… if [the Island] chooses to be under-represented, that is its choice.”
Conversely, in the Western Isles with only about 13,500 voters, each voter has around 5.5 times the influence of a ‘normal’ 76,000 constituency.
Support for the campaign
Since the launch of the OneWight campaign, we’ve been thinking more about the issue and speaking to people around the Island.
What’s clear from discussions, is that many people that we’ve spoken to (not all, but most) agree that they had the same strong, initial gut reaction of “we want one Wight,” but have since then questioned the other dimensions to it.
A few have gone as far as saying that they wished they could undo their signing of the petition, as they’d thought more about it since then.
Could there be 601 MPs, rather than 600?
Some have suggested that if the OneWight campaign is asking for an exception for one MP with a larger constituency, why not ask for an exception of two slightly lower constituency sizes (55,000 each) and have two MPs for the Island?
Going back to the point of Representation in Parliament, if the Island had two internal MPs, each Islander would have about 30% more influence that other UK areas.
As VB reported previously, an exception has been made for Scottish Islands, so some are asking, why not here?
What do you think?
There really is so much to this, it makes sense for those who are interested to share their thoughts. To put their varied points of view across – to open this discussion fully.
Perhaps that way, we’ll all become aware of the implications of this proposed significant change for the Island – making an active, informed choice, not just stopping at our initial gut-reactions.
