Just a short while ago this afternoon, the Conservative party lost the vote by 46 votes in the House of Commons to reform the boundary changes across the UK including the Isle of Wight.
The earliest that it can now happen is after the next election.
Readers will remember our report in August 2012, when Nick Clegg announced that Liberal Democrats would withdraw their support for the boundary reform.
Update 17.38: This just in from Isle of Wight MP, Andrew Turner, “This is not unexpected after the volte-face by the LibDems, but it means that plans to reduce the number of MPs will not now be in place for the next election.
“The move would have saved around £13.5m every year, but Nick Clegg MP, who originally enthusiastically supported the plans, decided to order his Lib Dem MPs to vote against them because he lost the vote on changing the House of Lords. That took very creative interpretation of the coalition agreement on his part – but it is in the nature of coalitions that there are differences of opinion and policy.
“However, locally our cross-party campaign against the Island having a cross-Solent seat is still a victory. When the changes do come in, and it is expected that they will be brought in before the election expected in 2020, the Island will have two MPs. We will go from being the largest constituency in the UK to being split into two of the smallest. We all worked together against the madness of a cross-Solent seat and were very well supported by the Island’s independent media. It was a great campaign – the results will just come a little later!”
