MY PRINT column this week looks at a huge shake-up of Britain's parliamentary map that is currently underway, and the degree to which this boundary review is causing what one senior Tory describes as "stress and angst" among MPs at Westminster. The accusation from the Labour Party is that horrid partisan motives lie behind the boundary review, which will take the House of Commons from 650 to 600 members and redraw hundreds of seats so that they contain almost identical numbers of electors (a big change from the status quo, in which lots of Welsh or Scottish seats contain as few as 50,000 voters, while several English seats contain 75,000 or more).

Now, it is true that the government's motives for embarking on this boundary review are, ahem, complex. Over drinks a year or so ago, I heard Conservative politicians chortling that the boundary review would cost Labour 20 seats, and because it was all in the name of fairness there was nothing that Labour could do about it, ho ho.

Labour tends to fear and dislike boundary reviews, because over time Labour seats tend to shrink and Tory ones grow (it is to do with long-term population shifts from cities and towns towards the suburbs) so that every time the system is reset, Labour tends to lose out. The great exception, psephologists report, was the 1997 election, before which an unusually brilliant Labour organiser called David Gardner marshalled local Labour activists to challenge proposed boundaries across the country so brilliantly that he probably added 15 or 20 seats to Tony Blair's first majority. Mr Gardner's success was such that the other parties made sure that they were just as carefully prepared at subsequent boundary reviews, eroding Labour's competitive advantage.

A few months ago, you could hear a lot of Conservatives grumbling that the review was vital because Britain's electoral map contains a built-in pro-Labour bias. It is certainly the case that on average, Labour MPs are elected with smaller numbers of winning votes than Tory MPs. It is also the case that Wales and Scotland have traditionally been given more constituencies than their populations justify, in comparison to England. And since the Tories barely exist in Wales and Scotland at the level of Westminster politics, that has been another blow to the Conservatives.

But in fact constituency size is only part of the explanation for the apparent "bias" in the electoral map. A more important difference is that Conservatives specialise in super-safe seats: even when a Tory victory is certain in a given seat local Tories will turn out to vote in large numbers, piling up lots of "surplus" votes. Labour votes are distributed more efficiently: their supporters tend only to turn out just enough to push their candidates across the winning line.

This message has been sinking in among Conservatives, as have studies showing that all three parties may see quite chunky numbers of safe seats turn marginal or vanish after the review, even if Labour and the Lib Dems are set to come off worse.

At Westminster, it is rare to hear a kind word about the whole process, which is routinely described as savagely partisan by Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, and as a mess by Tories. Some prominent figures on the Conservative right are so sure that the process will hammer the Lib Dems that they predict their junior coalition partners will ultimately do the dirty and vote all the new boundaries down in the House of Lords, when they come up for final parliamentary approval. I wonder: it would take a very bold bunch of unelected peers to vote down a measure that affects their elected brethren in the House of Commons. There is also the small matter than the boundary review is in the coalition agreement, as part of a tripartite deal on constitutional reform between the Tories and Lib Dems (the other parts being the AV referendum that the Lib Dems lost in May, and the whole question of turning the House of Lords into a largely-elected upper house).

The Boundary Commission for England (there are separate commissions for each of the four home nations) is currently holding dozens of public hearings all round the country, taking submissions from MPs, political parties and other interested locals in each region. Fleeing the Westminster bubble, I took myself to a public hearing this week in Ludlow, an achingly pretty market town in Shropshire (think expensive restaurants in half-timbered Elizabethan inns, lots of antique restorers and picture framers, and shops selling Farrow & Ball paint).

The stakes are pretty high for many of the MPs whose seats were being discussed at the Ludlow hearing. The only Labour MP in the surrounding county of Shropshire stands to lose his seat on the map being proposed by the Boundary Commission. Overall, the county is losing a seat, and Shropshire's four Conservative MPs may end up scrapping with Tory neighbours in "blue on blue" fights for the best of the area's new constituencies. That could make for some interesting fights: two Tory stalwarts whose seats are in the mix, Philip Dunne and Bill Wiggin, are government whips, while another Shropshire Tory, Mark Pritchard, is a leading Eurosceptic rebel (though at Westminster, well-informed sorts murmur that Peter Luff, a Conservative MP from next-door Worcestershire, is destined for the House of Lords, which would free up space for colleagues).

The odd thing is, despite all the high emotion at Westminster, when you go to watch the actual boundary review process on the ground, it is terribly polite, calm and good-natured. The column ponders why this might be, and concludes that if MPs are filled with fear and loathing, their distrust is aimed at each other, not the Boundary Commission, whose officers are seen as genuinely impartial.

More particularly, in the case of grumpy Tory MPs, their sharpest distrust is reserved for their own party leadership. David Cameron has told his MPs that boundary casualties will be looked after. Reader, not all of Mr Cameron's MPs believe him. And several of those who do believe him are so upset by what one senior figure calls the "appalling arrogance" of the party leadership towards MPs that they hate the idea of party HQ enjoying powers of patronage over seat-less members in need of a new constituency or a safe berth in the House of Lords (assuming that it still exists).

Here is the column:

LISTEN to the opposition Labour Party, and a shake-up of Britain's electoral map now under way—with 50 parliamentary seats for the chop, and hundreds facing redrawn borders—is an act of partisan “gerrymandering”. Believe some disgruntled MPs, and the review threatens the very fabric of democracy, creating new seats that will cross county lines and other time-hallowed boundaries. Oddly, given that the review is a Conservative initiative, some of the loudest complaints come from Tory MPs.

The grumblers should get out more. Some years ago, Bagehot was sent after 51 Texan Democrats who had fled their home state to wreck a legislative session and with it a scheme to carve a batch of safe (if weirdly-shaped) Republican seats from the congressional map. Pursued by arrest warrants, the runaways holed up at an Oklahoma motel, offering visiting reporters interviews, cigars and whisky. The Democrats won that round, but after more wrangling and a legal fight that went to the Supreme Court, Republicans mostly got their map. That's gerrymandering.

This week, in contrast, Bagehot headed to Ludlow, a handsome market town in Shropshire, to watch a public hearing being held by the Boundary Commission for England. That independent body has been asked to draw up new constituencies with nearly identical numbers of electors each, a big change from the status quo (sister commissions exist for other bits of the British Isles). Nationwide, for various reasons, that change will probably favour the Tories more than other parties. But Ludlow's hearing, in a Victorian former school hall, was hardly partisan at all.

Shropshire's only Labour MP, David Wright, came to appeal against a proposal to split his current seat in two, probably eliminating his majority. Mr Wright argued for a constituency drawn tightly around the county's largest town, the unlovely 1960s creation of Telford, surrounded by a second seat made up of villages and market towns. In psephologist-speak, he was arguing for a “doughnut”: a solidly Labour urban seat within a Tory outer ring. Conservative speakers came to lobby for what election-wonks call a “sandwich”: a pair of constituencies made up of urban, suburban and rural slices. They were taking a punt that one or both might return a Tory. Yet nobody could admit to pursuing party interests, for the Boundary Commission only considers appeals based on geography and the maintenance of “local ties”. The result was a festival of genteel special-pleading.

Mr Wright said that plans to split Telford in two would separate the foundry that makes the cast iron for Aga ovens (a brand of posh cookers costing as much as a small car) from the factory that assembles them. Speakers from Telford's Labour-controlled council talked about its “urban heartland”, as if it were the Bronx. In pursuit of their own interests, Conservative speakers portrayed the nearby River Wye as an almost impassable barrier crossed by only a few, narrow bridges, and fretted that one proposed seat would involve a lot of driving for its MP.

From Much Wenlock, a pretty town full of pricey houses, came a plea not to be lumped in with grittier Telford. Nobody said it aloud, but this smelled of snobbery: Aga-owners not wanting to mix with Aga-makers. After each submission, the assistant commissioner—a grand London lawyer hired to oversee the public consultation—asked brisk questions and pored over bundles of maps. From outside came the reassuring tinkle of teacups, promising that a break neared. Later, party representatives denied they had been pursuing partisan goals. Well, maybe a bit, they admitted, but mostly their concern was preserving local communities. All believed absolutely in the commission's independence.

This matters. Even at a time of deep hostility to politics, the British still have faith in avowedly impartial bits of the state, such as boundary commissions, public inquiries and judicial reviews. If the boundary review is causing unhappiness among politicians, that is largely because being an MP today is rather grim.

The dangers of safe seats

Labour unhappiness is easily explained. The review is expected to cost it about 20 MPs, partly because under-sized seats in Wales and Scotland will be culled. The Liberal Democrats are also due to take a pasting. Yet—for all that Conservative bigwigs expect to lose just 13 or so seats—Conservative MPs are among the grumpiest of all. A senior Tory describes a mood of “angst and stress”.

Angst among Tory parliamentarians has two causes. First, a sense that constituency associations have a whip hand over MPs: the expenses scandal did for deference, grassroots activists have firm views on such issues as Europe (and use the internet to track how MPs vote), and after the review many MPs will need to woo new associations. Local activists are unfussed about current Conservative MPs having to fight over the best new seats. This is about Shropshire, says one Tory stalwart, not “some MP's career”.

Secondly, many Tory MPs distrust their leadership. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has vowed that boundary casualties will be looked after. But the mood is so toxic that some right-wingers want him to put his pledge in writing, or to ditch the review altogether. Some MPs want ambassadorial appointments to be opened to seat-less Tories. With others hoping to be sent to the House of Lords, there is pressure to ditch a coalition pledge to Lib Dems to create a mostly elected upper house.

Politicians should not push their luck. In Ludlow market, shoppers declared that they did not care how large new constituencies were, if a smaller House of Commons saved money. Being an MP is an insecure business just now. On balance, that is a good thing: safe seats feed extremism. For all the Westminster grumbling, British political debate still leaves room for a moderate middle, and not just deafening partisans. Quaint, impartial boundary commissioners can take much of the credit.