Tories urge Boris Johnson to press on with boundary changes that could deliver 104-seat majority Former cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith, Damian Green, Liam Fox, Lord Pickles have urged the Prime Minister to press on with reforms

Senior Conservatives have urged Boris Johnson to press forward with a plan to cut the size of the House of Commons for the next election that could deliver an even bigger Tory majority.

Controversial plans published under Theresa May’s government in 2018 would see the number of MPs cut from 650 to 600, shaking up many of the existing constituency boundaries in the process.

The proposed cut in seats would favour the Conservatives, with research from Electoral Calculus suggesting Boris Johnson would have won an even bigger majority if the 2019 election had been held on the basis of the new boundaries.

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Mr Johnson would have received 352 seats to Labour’s 174 if the system had been in place – a 104-seat majority, compared to his current 80-seat majority.

The plans were not put to a vote in the last Parliament due to fears of a rebellion from backbench Tories who faced the scrapping of their seats – but in a letter published in The Sunday Telegraph, party figures pressed the Prime Minister to push forward with the reforms.

‘Fix the system’

The letter is signed by Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the Tory backbench 1922 committee, as well as ex-cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith, Damian Green, Liam Fox and Lord Pickles.

It states: “We are writing to show our support for fixing the current, deeply flawed parliamentary constituency boundaries as fast as possible.

“The existing constituencies vary enormously in size – from some in which fewer than 40,000 voters elect a Westminster MP, to others where it takes 90,000 or more.

“That means votes in some parts of the country are worth more than twice as much as those in others, which is neither right nor fair. Everyone’s vote should be worth the same, which means that constituencies should be equally sized.”

The letter adds: “The Boundary Commission produced new proposals to right this wrong several years ago. They are ‘oven-ready’, but opposition parties have refused to let them through Parliament until now.

“Whether the existing proposals are used, or new ones are produced, it is essential for the health and credibility of Britain’s democracy that the current unfairly skewed system is put right, and equal-sized constituencies where everyone’s vote weighs the same are created immediately.”

Proportional voting

A number of high-profile MPs, including the Prime Minister himself and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, would see their current seats scrapped under the mooted plans.

The changes are opposed by Labour and the SNP, who argue that the reforms would introduce systemic bias in favour of the Conservatives.

Some, like Labour’s David Lammy, have called for the current first-past-the-post election model to be thrown out entirely.

On Sunday, Mr Lammy mooted “a new proportional voting system to encourage more compromise in politics” as he set out his stall for the Labour leadership election.

The Electoral Reform Society has also called for wholesale reforms to the UK’s voting system, saying that the system “has warped electoral results for too long”, leading to “the rotten state of winner-takes-all results.”