Norfolk Boundary Review: "Coalition Stitch-Up"?

On my way home from work tonight I met one of Norwich Labour's hardest workers, standing on the street corner visably fuming. Little did I know that the Boundary Review had been leaked and if Guido is correct then Labour have a lot to worry about. My angry socialist friend went off on one about a "coalition stitch-up" which sees all the Tory and LibDem held seats get safer and thus more difficult for Labour to gain. Here in Norwich South there are no changes whatsoever, but Labour's view is that no matter where the boundaries took him Simon Wright is a (political) dead-man walking.

Not so long ago Labour held 3 seats in Norfolk - Norwich N, Norwich S and Yarmouth - with an outside chance of NW Norfolk in a very good year (e.g. 1997). In that year they also got very close to taking SW Norfolk it should be remembered but never actually achieved it.

And now what? With Great Yarmouth taking in the staunchly Conservative areas around the southern tip of North Norfolk, Tory MP Brandon Lewis will have even more blue-backing rural areas to "overwhelm" the Labour folk of GY. In addition, those changes would make North Norfolk safer for LibDem Norman Lamb - and even more so when the strongly LibDem (at General Elections, anyway) area around Fakenham are put back in the seat. That leaves just Norwich North where Chloe Smith will see her majority soar as she takes safe Tory territories of Drayton and Taverham back into her patch.

Despite changes, the new "Kings Lynn" seat is still well out of reach for Labour and "South Norfolk", "Broadland & Dereham" and "Thetford & Swaffham" equally so.

So for Labour their best case scenario of a Norfolk with 3 winnable seats is shot to pieces - just 1 (Norwich S) remains.

My Labour friend seethed and sweated. He believed that this is all a stitch-up to guarantee coalition seats in the county and deny Labour representation. Labour, I am told, will fight this all the way. He argued that Norfolk will have 8 safe seats and 1 marginal and so politics could become very boring indeed in the future.

We'll see. But this Boundary decision, I sense, is far from over.