On revised boundaries? Not possible

James Lyons in the News of the World over the weekend suggested that Cameron’s team had plans to have a second general election in 2010 if, as some polls are indicating, he doesn’t have a workable majority.

He also said that before the second election measures would be taken to change the boundaries so it would be fought on a “fairer basis”.

Lyons wrote: “Tories… are secretly drawing up plans to ask the country to vote again in the hope he would win big at the second time of asking. ..It would be a risky move for Cameron — he could be turfed out of office by voters fed up with being asked to vote again…But he plans to change the voting system beforehand to make a big Tory win more likely. He wants to redraw constituency boundaries which, at the moment, unfairly favour Labour…”

Would that really be possible – a radical change of the whole boundary structure to be in place, say by October?

From enquiries I’ve made the suggestion would seem to be a nonsense. The Tories want to speed up the process and reduce the number of seats – but that would require primary legislation which those who know about these things tell me would an impossibility within the time-scale.

In any case the current system at the coming election will, in my view, not produce an outcome that appears to be as biased towards Labour as seems to be received wisdom.

Although the Tories are not doing as well as they would like ICM last week had 66% saying they wanted change to just 25% wanting to stick with Labour. In that environment people will vote in the way that best achieves change.

And if that is the case then a lot of the argument for urgent boundary reform will go by the wayside.

There has been betting on two elections in 2010 but the only market I can find operating at the moment is from Betfair.

BETTING UPDATE: Ladbrokes now have their two elections in 2010 up at 10/1.

Mike Smithson