The UK’s Weirdest Constituencies Explained
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We all know that the UK's political system can be a bit odd at times, especially in how our constituencies are set up. So, in this video, we're going to look at some strange UK constituencies, and what makes them so unique.
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I don’t see what’s weird about a cat having an official cabinet position. In my opinion, every government should have one.
its also good knowing there is someone in No.10 that can be trusted.
hello sir are you a cat, this is something a cat would say
@@owensquelch449 And has better experience in office than most politicians today 😂
Mr. Meowsie, Secretary of Defense
The cat has been the most competent member of the cabinet in living memory.
Idk what he means with the chief mouser, hes the only good minister the uk has
I am not British, but I have never heard any complaints regarding the Chief Mouser's conduct in the entirety of his tenure. Nor have I heard anything regarding his late former co-office holder, Freya. Both had to have been the best Downing Street had to offer these past years.
@@Khookies-lp2luThe chief mouser has shown very disrespectful conduct to the fragile table pottery of the 10 Downing street residence
@@socialistrepublicofvietnam1500It's not his fault, he didn't know it was fragile at the time.
mouser was the term given to working cats who'd be there to catch mice & rats. 10/10 best minister the UK has had.
@@philhahn 🤓 Uhm ackshully, he's a civil servant not a minister in the government.
This is very amusing as a Canadian. I work for Elections here. Our largest constituency is Nunavut with just over two million square kilometers, and around 37,000 islands. It is about the same size as Western Europe, and at just about the same size as Mexico. It only has around 33,000 people but you would not want to make it any bigger!
wow and I thought Durack in Australia was a big electorate at 1,383,954 km2
@@hyperfeenNunavut would be 2,093,190 km2, It’s funny to think about that the “large” constituency of Ross, Skye, and Lochaber is only 12,000km2 or smaller than 62 ridings in Canada.
Okay, so you have a cat in office?
The United States has Alaska's at-large Congressional district.
This video is incredibly London-centric. Dude has just discovered that islands exist.
"The ballots have to be brought over from the Scilly Isles" is a very funny sentence.
Quite Scilly.
There is no such place as the Scilly Isles. It's either the Isles of Scilly or just plain Scilly. I should know I'm a born and bred Scillonian. We enjoy being last to declare.
@@grahamnancledra7036 Now you're just being Scilly
@@grahamnancledra7036 Do you call the UK the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland every time?
@@grahamnancledra7036 don't blame me I'm just quoting what the guy saideded
It is disappointing that you didn't think it worth your while to check the correct pronunciation of Gaelic constituency.
Caithness and Sutherland constituency doesn't include any of the Orkney islands. You may be referring to Stroma, 2km off the North Caithness coast. It is now uninhabited and has always been a part of Caithness.
Also, he referred to "The Orkneys" -this abbreviationis never used. It's either called "Orkney" or "The Orkney Isles"
At this point the Chief Mouser should be our Designated Survivor…
also worth noting that if the GE was to happen tomorrow, Lee Anderson is predicted to finish FOURTH in the election behind Labour, Ashfield Independents and Reform UK.
That thought makes me feel warm and squishy inside, thank you
@@FightingTorque411might want to get that checked out
@@FightingTorque411 thought it might ! 🥰
30p Lee
@@LWQ1588115p. Inflation has apparently halved 😊
I always described UK politics as being like an OS that rather then coming out with a new version, it's just been patched to hell to keep it running.
How am I only learning about the “Chief Mouser” today after 17 years 😅
I think I'd heard about it in some newspaper or a magazine as a fun fact when it was first given that title.
His name is Larry and his wikiepdia page treats him like a real mi interested including any of his criticisms.
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they discover the mouser in chief
Because you’re 17….
That one's on you, pal.
Plenty of videos on the Chief Mouser here on TH-cam
You missed East Devon, where the independent candidate picked up about 40% of the vote.
Not sure what i expected but hearing a very English voice pronounce Lochaber is hilarious 😂
Rhymed with Aga
"Na haylanan an E.R" was brutal
Same with the way he pronounced Birkenhead. We don’t really pronounce the he. So it should sound like Birken Ed as opposed to Birken Head .
What was really weird he got it more or less right the first two times and then butchered it when he said it in South Lochaber later on.
Not to mention eeenees Mon!
So, those weirdnesses again:
1. The UK has islands.
2. Populations don't always live in neat 70.000 member groups.
3. Some constituencies field LOCAL candidates.
4. Some old tradtions get upkept.
I'm shocked and horrified at these revelations. Who would have thought that the UK has islands, landlocked on all sides as it is?
It’s hard to describe how incredibly unworkable Ross Skye and Lochaber is like even if you’re any of the major town it would take you over 5 hours in a round trip to get to another major town if the consistency offices aren’t in your town and you wish to talk to your MP! Additionally if you’re in a village or even worse on one of the islands you could be looking at upwards of 12 hours to get there with ferries or if you’re stuck using public transport near impossible to get to see your local MP! This is then highly discriminatory to the disabled, the the poor, the elderly and anyone who isn’t lucky enough to be where your MP is based! Then meaning it’s highly unlikely the MP would be representative of issues from people over 3 hours away they never meet!
in remote or rugged areas of Australia with low populations, the local MP travels to regional towns and constituents can make appointments closer to their homes. Surely that happens in the UK too?
@@Dave_Sisson Most MPs hold "surgeries" with constituents which aren't typically held in just one place. Even in an average sized constituency it's not always going to be possible for someone to travel to one location. I would assume the MPs in these remote areas must do the same.
@@Wozza365 The term "surgery" made me smile. I know politicians (of all parties) butcher the economy, but I can't imagine a politician operating on a constituent.
I live on Skye and have had dealings with the MP at various times. At first it was by letter, latterly by email. Both the men who've represented me (each from a different party) have resonded promptly every time. I feel both of them were good constituency MPs and that we here are able to make it work in spite of the distances. Anyway, these distances are not that extreme - I live at one edge of the consituency and can be in almost any other part of it in under 2.5 hours driving.
@@carelgoodheir692
> not that extreme
> 2.5 hours of driving
Man we live in different worlds. 2.5 hour drive is weekend away territory for me down near south of England.
The Isle of Wight has always been underrepresented in parliament. That's why it's been spilt in two . Up until the next election, it's had five times the number of voters, then the smallest Scottish constituency. In fact, the person who has come second on the island often has had the second most votes of in britain.
And now it’ll ne over-represented.
Surprising.
@@Knappa22It will but what can you do?
Too big as one constituency but split it in half and they're too small. Don't see how to resolve it, you can hardly nick random bits off the mainland to make up the numbers.
@@reddwarfer999 I don’t see why not. Why is it seen as imperative that island constituencies can’t include a portion of mainland?
@@Knappa22Think about it from the perspective of those on the mainland. You're just a random chunk of land stuck onto an island quite a few miles away, only reached by ferry, and will likely have rather different local issues to yourselves.
Orcadian here! Very slight nit-picking, it's not "The Orkneys" but rather "The Orkney Isles". No one on or around the isles will refer to the isles as the former.
(Although this is a very common mistake a lot of news site get wrong)
What makes it wrong? Just that the locals don't use that term?
Why? You make it sound like it blasphemy lol
@@Starkweather133 Sorry, don't think my tone came across well in my comment. Moreso, if I go somewhere, and I don't know the term for a group from a place, I'd usually ask someone from their what they'd want to be called. Similarly, if I'd assumed a name before, and a local were to correct me, I'd usually take their word for it.
@@CDromatron I’m not saying you’re wrong obviously, but your original comment made it seems like you go missing if you refer to it wrong! Also, in my 30 years on the mainland I’ve only heard of Orkney being referred to as The Orkneys. If I ever visit, I’ll remember to refer to it correctly!
This is also the case for The Shetland Isles, there is no such place as “The Shetlands”
Isles of Scilly not Scilly Isles
A couple of points, Stroma and the Skerries are part of Caithness, not The Orkney Isles. They are also uninhabited so Highland Council doesn't have the problem that Cornwall has with the Scilly Isles. In terms of constituencies where independents are in second place you may want to look at East Devon, aka Exmouth and Exeter East, where an independent has come second in the last 3 general elections.
The Isle of Skye is connected though - there is a bridge to the mainland that is free to use now.
0:28 I see what you did there 😂
Lord Buckethead is always watching
Birkenhead is getting boundary changes. Its merging with Wirral South and Alison McGovern will be the Labour Candidate. The Greens will be one to look at there. Birkenhead votes for anything with a red rosette but are disallusioned with the two main parties. They are more likely to go left of Labour
4:40 if that doesn’t show us that first past the post is the most silly thing ever, I don’t know what will.
Popular Representation is better for democracy.
@@wotermelon_ proportional?
@@theuglykwan That's what it means, representation based on popular vote rather than constituencies.
Please call it Orkney or the Orkney Isles/Islands... NOT "The Orkneys" same goes for Shetland
It’s so funny to me that each MP has a target number of 70,000 constituents. In the US each member of Congress has a target number of 800k. In my home state the target number is 92k for state reps, but state senators in Texas have a target number of over a million
It is slightly different insofar as US house including state house and senate districts are drawn by total population, whereas UK constituencies are drawn by registered voters so in reality they tend to have populations of 100k or so
Larger country has larger constituencies shocker.
@@ethanrawcliffe924another big difference : there is a neutral commission tasked with drawing constituencies in the UK. This way the UK avoids gerrymandering that's so common in the US.
If the US had 70k as a target, the House of Representatives would have more than 4,000 members. If the UK had 800k as a target, there would be fewer than 70 MPs.
I'm from the speaker's constituency. He's a great local MP. That said I won't be voting for him this time round (will probably vote green) as essentially a protest vote against the major parties (despite the fact that technically there'll be nobody in the constituency representing them). Frustrating for us that we know who will win before the contest has even started.
I'm also originally from near Ashfield so it's always interested me how close the Independents have got to parliament and how well they did in the local elections [32 of 35 local councillors]. Given Anderson's waning popularity and the fact the town is still very much pro-brexit and so not completely sold on Labour, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the Independents get in next time around.
the speaker got into some serious problems lately regarding his management of parliament procedures... some heavy favouritism looks like... if this continues i wouldnt be surprised if Conservatives put a candidate against him... also no reason why Reform wouldnt compete there...
@@zbynekurbanek3345 It's difficult to consider Reform as a main party considering they don't have any seats. The SNP and Plaid Cymru may well find a way to stand someone against Hoyle, despite the fact that by convention they don't stand outside of Scotland and Wales respectively. I doubt the Tories will stand anyone as most Tories have not expressed no confidence in Hoyle and they will not want to waste resources on attempting to unseat him which is very likely to fail. The Lib Dems will probably abide by convention and not stand in Chorley; the Greens may.
You should consider doing a piece on Australia federal electorates. I live in a single member constituency that is over 1.3 million square kilometres. There is another 1.3 million square KM federal electorate, Lingiari in the very centre of Australia which includes Christmas island over 3,000km from the geographic centre of the electorate. (Christmas Island is just to the south of Java in Indonesia).
Very Map Men coded - I love it! Great episode 👏
This is a good throwback to tldr's vids featuring Commons Speaker Bercow
I'd call those weird, but then I head about a thing called Gerrymandering... :P
I'm not a Gaelic speaker, but even I winced at your pronunciation of Na H- Eilean An Iar.
I am a Gàidhlig speaker and his pronunciation of Na H- Eilean An Iar was perfectly acceptable.
His pronunciations of Lochalsh and Lochaber however, were less so
The spelling is also wrong, it should be Na H- Eilean An Siar, something I now clearly remember, from watching the news.@@mcswordfish
@@hamishmackinnon2231 not exactly. It can be either "Siar" or "an Iar" to mean "of/from the West". The council use the former, but the constituency uses the latter.
It is "Na h-Eileanan an Iar" or "Na h-Eileanan Siar". "An siar" does not exist in Gaelic.
An Iar = (which lies) in the west
Siar = West, western
Also, "Eilean" is singular, so just the one island. The official and proper name is "Eileanan" (plural). :)
For bonus points, "Comhairle nan Eilean Siar" is "Eilean" rather than "Eileanan" because it's in the genitive case, i.e. the Gaelic equivalent if the "s" at the end of English "my father's car". ;)
I remember quite the rivalry the Foreign Office had when it got its own mouser
My aunt is in charge or collecting the ballot box on one of the Isles of Scilly (St Martins) and the weather was so bad once she had to leave it in her kitchen over night before it could be taken to St Mary’s.
Solve all this with Proportional Representation. Every MP elected from a shortlist needs at least 25,000 votes.
This is littered with small mistakes but the big stinker for me is that you appear to have only just discovered the concept of islands.
Chief Mouser is the only cabinet member i can trust
You should do a video on the weird traditions of the British Parliament any why they exist
More vídeos like this pls!
They should give the cat equal powers to the prime minister, just for novelty sake
The cat is only one doing its just job properly.
One county in the USA is composed of a 100 mile long chain of islands: the Florida keys, from Key Largo to Key West
What a fabulous and impactful exhibition. Thank you for sharing it with us.
As a Lochabor resident I appreciate this level of coverage. 🧐
My fave weird constituency is still Bristol North West. Since on most boundary maps, it's the only constituency which has it's boundary stretched out into the sea.
We have the same geographic/population problems in the US Congress. 6 states only have 1 representative each in the House, while other big cities have multiple representatives. Harris County, TX (Houston) is so big, it has more people than 25 other states, despite the physical size being smaller than Connecticut.
Well done on your pronunciation of some of the Scottish constituencies, you did better than most and they were largely close to the mark.
One mistake to note though (and this is one in English, not Gaelic or Gaelic derived names) - it's just Shetland and Orkney, not the Shetlands or the Orkneys. Unlike say the Uists, they're not pluralised. It's akin to saying the Scotlands, the Englands or indeed in Orkney's case, the Essixes. Just something to note as the Speaker would likely be having words if this was Parliament.
And if you had looked at the history of the Scottish north west constituencies they were even stranger as an ellean siar was half the size as Invernessshire council had parts of it
I live on one of the islands that make up North Ayrshire & Arran (Arran, Bute & Cumbrae) the difficulty with the ballot on the island is the last ferry to the mainland is at 8:30pm so the boxes are helicoptered to the count
Interesting! A couple of corrections: It's "Na h-Eileanan an Iar" and not "Na h-Eilean" (the second one is grammatically incorrect), and it's pronounced Lochaber with the "a" similar to the one in "father". ;) Thanks for the video!
Gaelic speaker here. Appreciate you didn't give up and just said the western isles like most London based commentators but that was also nothing like how to say Na h-Eilean an Iar. Lochaber was a difficult moment as well.
'S e truagh a th' ann nach do litrich iad "Eileanan" gu ceart, ge-tà. Chan eil fhios agam ciamar a bhios luchd na Beurla daonnan a' sgrìobhadh "Eilean" nuair 's e "Eileanan" a bu chòir a bhith ann. 😅
I know natives and residents of Fort William who don't know how to pronounce the Gaelic version of their town's name and seem totally bemused by the bilingual signposts that have been erected in the last few years. They do know how to pronounce Lochaber though - not least because Fort William is its main population centre!
@@user-mn4cc6bb7t I live north of Fort William and know plenty of folk who can pronounce An Gearasdan.
Isn't there also a constituency in Devon where an Independent could be the main challenger?
Good video, learned a lot. Would be interesting if one of the minor parties took the Speaker's seat (the first Monster Raving Loony MP?)
You learned a lot, except how to pronounce places in Scotland
The largest federal electorate in Australia is Durack, in WA. It has an area of 1,383,954 square kilometres.
You gotta love it when TLDR puts Ben lookin down right silly in the thumbnail.
Alston,Cumbria?
Westmoreland n furnace now
Based 70 miles away from Alston
Loved when you started mentioning all the uniquely populated islands. All Island Games nations!
It'd probably be a video too long for your usual format but I'd be well up for a more historical take on this, going over previously weird constituencies (or oddities in local politics - like the continuity Liberals). Seats won by parties smaller than the Greens (say, Wyre Forest), seats with odd match-ups (like when Ceredigion was a LD-PC marginal) or maybe even some that are just a bit geographically odd (like York being divided into Outer and Inner rather than by sides of town).
There is a 3rd constinecentcy with an independent coming so close to the conservative MP- Claire Wright in East Devon for 2015, 2017 and 2019.
Has the Speaker ever been defeated by an independent?
Not BIRKenhead. The stress is on the last syllable, Iie. BirkenHEAD
This is nothing compared to the gerrymandered congressional districts in the US 😂
>video about UK politics
>"BUT AMERICA!!1!"
It's America afterall lol, a country where a man can lose the popular vote of most people, but win the election due to states of 10 people voting for him
Gerrymandering and 2 parties. Not really a democracy, is it?
In fairness they have Northern Ireland which is literally an entire gerrymandered country. They also have their fair share of orange loving idiots.
@@rictusnal How dare he compare a similar phenomenon in two countries with sort of similar voting system 😠
Appreciate you using the Welsh name for my constituency of Ynys Môn, good pronounciation too!
Really? “Inis mon”, not “unis moan”?
the thumbnail brought me to watch this video
Ben is one handsome fellow ❤
@@goochchuang 🤨
@ 0:40 - "Electorally Weird" - with 20p Lee in view. Now I know you all have an *excellent* sensayumer - you've put a big smile on my face 😆
Incidentally, after discussing Ashfield and Birkenhead, there's was also a 3rd constituency that had an independent come second in the GE - East Devon. The Tories won the seat with 32k votes, the independent candidate came second with £26k with Labour a distant 3rd with 3k. The independent candidate (Claire Wright) has actually come 2nd in the last 3 general elections in East Devon in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
You missed one second place by an independent in the 2019 general election - East Devon where Claire Wright came second with 40.4% of the vote.
North Ayrshire and Arran may include some small islands, but Rhum, Eigg, and others are medium sized in geographical and cultural terms.
Rhum and Eigg between them account for 140 votes. I don’t know how much smaller they could be in order to be counted “small”
Here's a Canadian perspective:
Part 1: We have all of those things as well, except for the cat.
Part 2: Ross, Skye and Lochaber being about 12,000 square kilometres is pretty big, I suppose. The riding (Canadian word for constituency) of Nunavut, in northern Canada is about 2 million square kilometres, with thousands of islands, and no roads between villages, towns and the only city, Iqaluit.
The wierdest from scotland i heard of is commando under the kilt.
If they see boxers then you get charged 2 pints to the snitchie...
There’s nothing weird about islands being combined with part of the mainland to comprise a constituency
The city of Toronto, Canada, has 23 federal ridings. Nunavut is one federal riding and half the size of European Russia.
York Outer is another unusual constituency because it forms a doughnut shaped ring around York Central. Bath is currently surrounded in a similar way by North East Somerset but this won't be the case any more owing to the boundary reviews.
Weird? I think that you mean charmingly quaint and characterful. Politics is soulless enough as it is.
Why don’t they count the votes from Scilly in Scilly? Here in Australia each polling booth counts the votes cast after the polls close.
@@dazzlingdaz187 The same people who man the booth count the votes. There are scrutineers from each of the parties and the ballot papers are retained. It works for us here in Australia.
@@dazzlingdaz187 Yup and there is no reason why you can’t do it too.
Other than the UK’s innate inability to do anything different.
Ross, Skye, and Lochabor must seem like an enormous amount of space to be represented by just one person if you've never heard of Alaska
surprised my constituency wasn’t mentioned. You have to cross the English Welsh boarder twice to get from one end to the other as part of the new boundaries that have been created.
Could you not just order more 196s and run the services Bromsgrove? You can get some very tight clearances with OLE. Until HS2 opens, there will not be enough capacity for more trains through New Street. Hence, Cross City services had to be reduced.
That’s so interesting. It’s mad imagine trying to campaign in the highlands
Have you done an Official Monster Raving Loony Party primer?
Ynys Mon is weird electorally too - it’s represented by two different parties in Westminster and the Senedd
Theres a bridge from lochabar to skye now
in canada votes are counted at polling stations and the results are phoned into returning office. no 6 am announcements...
Can't believe you didn't even mention the fact that Frank Field had been the MP for Birkenhead for 40 years before losing his seat.
The speaker occupying a constituency is one of the worst features of FPTP
this isn't a feature that'd go away with PR really... nor is it a feature of FPTP naturally, it's just a feature of british politics being british politics.
You'd still need a speaker with a fairer form of elections.
You want geographically big and thinly populated? Nunavut runs from Manitoba in the south to Greenland in the east and the North Pole in the north. It has less than 19K electors spread over 1.8M square km featuring 36K islands.
Largest single-member electorate in the world, after Western Australia broke up the frankly ridiculous Kalgoorlie one in 2010. Bloody thing was 2.2 million square kilometres. One of The Chaser's election coverage shows scrolled a joke headline across the screen of "Kalgoorlie MP regrets doorknocking on foot." back in 2007.
Ynys Mon has the Menai Bridge connecting it, they could make Isles of Scilly it own Constituency, as well as the other Scottish Isles.
Giving an island of 2000 people a seat is hardly fair on everyone else
If Cornwall had any common sense, they'd have a separate counting office in Scilly.
But I look forward to them, Shetland, Hebrides, Gibraltar, Falkland, St Lucia, and others becoming Bailiwicks like Jersey
and Guernsey.
5:18 I sincerely hope someone did not just put "Brexit" as their middle name...
I would have thought that the Shetlands and the Faeroes? would declare later than the Isles of Scilly, as the distances from the mainland are over 100 miles, compared with the Isles of Scilly at about 25 miles from the mainland.
This is the nerdy stuff I'm here for
70k voters in 12000 km^2? And that's the largest electorate? Britain is _really_ dense!
Aldridge-Brownhills
i'll never understand chatham and aylesford constituency in kent. it goes across two different councils and the boundaries are so awkward. it would make more sense to put chatham with another area in kent like gillingham central.
And what do you take out of that constituency as a result, and where does it go?
Every boundary change sets off a chain reaction. Given the constraints they're about as good as they can be.
It's probably the bit left over after they've cut all the other ones out of Kent.
Honestly with the state this country is in I'm all in favour of Chief Mouser being our new PM.
About East Devon constituency? Claire Wright (an independent) has come second there to the Tories every election since 2015.
Another non-contiguous constituency that I have voted in was Sittingbourne and Sheppey, although there is a bridge to the island of Sheppey.
I lived in the ward of Teynham though which is now being transferred to the Faversham constituency in the recent review.
Good attempt on the Gaelic but Nan H-Eilean Siar is pronounced ‘Nan Ye-ll-an Sh-ear’!
Shetland and Orkney. Both singular
TLDR how to pronounce Lochaber, apparently.
A valiant but woeful attempt of "Na h-Eileanan an Iar"
Is Dorset South (containing Portland) a non-contiguous constituency?
The Isle of Portland ...isn't an island ...
@@davidioanhedgesYes it is, it's what's known as a "tied island". The Isle of Purbeck, on the other hand ....
In the intro, you missed the House of Lords and lack of preferential voting 😉