Boundary Review: Sussex

Theoretically, at least, East and West Sussex don't need to be combined in this boundary review: West Sussex is entitled to 7.9 seats and East Sussex 7.7. But that 0.3 variance for East Sussex, though it sounds tiny, would mean that the electoral average for the county would be barely 73,000, meaning that all 8 seats would have to have literally almost identical electorates - and that would mean ward splitting - which the Commission is reluctant to do.

Even together, the electoral average for Sussex is less than 75,000, but that at least makes it possible to draw 16 seats without splitting any wards.

In West Sussex very little needs changing: Chichester and Horsham are slightly too big; Crawley and Littlehampton slightly too small; and South Downs and the other coastal seats broadly the right size. But Mid Sussex has become a very strangely shaped seat - essentially three growing commuter towns (East Grinstead, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill) linked by an increasingly tenuous strip of farmland. By combining the two counties, this seat can be radically reshaped - and that has political consequences.

In the model above, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill form a fairly compact new seat with Lewes town - and that will be un-winnable for the Lib Dems. Lewes also loses Newhaven to bring Brighton Kemptown up to size. Newhaven votes Lib Dem in Lewes but in a seat like Brighton this relatively deprived port could well offset the Conservative votes Peacehaven has brought to Kemptown as the seat has expanded along the coast away from Central Brighton.

Which leaves rural Lewes - far less Lib Dem inclined than the county town itself, combined with chunks of Wealden and Bexhill and Battle; again a very difficult seat for the Lib Dems to win, even with a trenchant campaigner like Norman Baker. Of the two main seats Lewes is divided between, this one is slightly easier simply because more of it has had experience of electing a Lib Dem MP, but plenty more has not and will not.

The one piece of good news for the Lib Dems is that Eastbourne does not need to be changed at all - nor can it be without splitting wards or radically redrawing the borough, which is unlikely to happen.

For Labour, the changes to Sussex will be broadly neutral: Crawley can only expand into Conservative surrounds, but it only need gain one small ward from Horsham and if Labour is in the lead nationally Crawley should be competitive. Hastings loses Rye - which again is not unhelpful to Labour. And as referred to earlier, Brighton Kemptown should be a little better. Brighton Pavilion is unaltered and will increasingly become a two way battle as the Conservatives and Lib Dems fade. But Hove needs to gain a ward - a small ward - and because the Unitary Authority's wards are large, the only easy way to bring it up to size without wreaking havoc elsewhere is to include Hurstpierpoint just to the north.

The problem for Labour is that the party is incredibly weak here: no candidate was even fielded at this year's council elections in this ward, and the last time the county council seat was fought in 2009 Labour polled just 5.7%. Clearly, this won't help win Hove back, though the ongoing demographic shift away from the Conservatives in Brighton probably will, eventually, offset this problem.