Major changes to the way Bristol and the surrounding areas elect MPs for the Westminster parliament have taken another step forward. And already the campaign for the next General Election has begun in earnest.
The Boundary Commission changes have been confirmed and it should be a formality for them to be passed by Parliament. If the next General Election takes place after January 2024, as expected, then tens of thousands of voters in and around Bristol will be voting in new or different constituencies.
There are two big changes in Bristol itself. The first is the creation of a new Bristol North East seat, which is already the subject of an internal battle within the Labour Party to be selected as the candidate there. And the new seat of Bristol Central looks set to be the most fiercely-fought battleground in the Bristol area next year.
Read next: Mayor in London coming home to Bristol with hopes of becoming MP
Bristol Central mainly matches the old Bristol West seat, but no longer includes any voters who live east of Temple Way and Temple Meads, in communities like Easton, Barton Hill and Lawrence Hill.
And the geographically smaller constituency means the Green Party is again claiming it can win the new seat from Labour, with candidate and national party co-leader Carla Denyer becoming only the party’s second ever MP.
The new constituency includes Hotwells, the city centre, Cotham, Redland, Ashley, St Pauls, St Werburghs, Montpelier and Clifton. Cllr Denyer, is one of 12 Green Party councillors representing wards within the new Bristol Central seat - Labour has just two councillors. The Green Party this week claimed the boundary changes meant that Thangam Debbonaire’s current majority in the old Bristol West would automatically be halved when it changes to Bristol Central. The Green Party already has its ‘Bristol Central Is Green’ and ‘Carla Can Win’ election posters printed, complete with a map-graphic showing that 12-2 councillor split within the new constituency.
Sign up to the Bristol politics newsletter here
“Bristol residents have already shown their appetite for Green politics by electing us as the largest party on the City Council,” said Cllr Denyer. “And following the Greens’ stand-out local election results all over England this May, the message from voters is clear: they want the Tories out but are entirely uninspired by Starmer’s Labour.
“In the event of a Labour general election win, Green MPs in Parliament can work hard to pull Labour in a more progressive direction - on climate action, worker's rights, public ownership of public services, compassionate immigration policy, tuition fees, right to protest, proportional representation, progressive taxation and so much more.
“Voters in Bristol Central have a rare opportunity to create real change, both in Bristol and nationally,” she added.
The Greens confidence hangs on one key requirement - that voters in the new Bristol Central seat will vote the same way in a General Election for their local MP in 2024 that they did for their councillor in the local elections in 2021. And that is not a given. The Greens' poster map of green dots from the 2021 council election that they are using to promote their bid to win in 2024 is very similar to the way the map looked after the 2015 local council elections and the ones in 2016 too - and a year and three years after that, Labour's Thangam Debbonaire won huge majorities in the Westminster vote.
Bristol West has always been a volatile seat in terms of General Election results - who wins it or finishes second is constantly changing. In fact, it has only produced the same 1st, 2nd and 3rd result in two successive general elections once in the past 30 years, over seven different General Elections.
While the Green Party says it is confident of winning the seat in 2024, it has a mountain to climb. Thangam Debbonaire won the seat in the 2017 post-Brexit vote election on a Corbyn wave, which saw her more than double the number of voters to more than 47,000.
In 2019, as Carla Denyer recovered to take second place, more than 47,000 people voted Labour again - almost two in every three voters. That means Cllr Denyer will have to overturn a nominal 28,219 majority in 2024.
Thangam Debbonaire said she has been working hard for the people of Bristol. "I continue to work hard for the people of Bristol," she said, when Bristol Live approached her about the new seat and the Green Party's claim. "I’ve been recovering thousands of pounds for local people from failing government systems and helping asylum seekers get their refugee status to settle in Bristol. In Parliament I’ve been setting out Labour’s plans to rebuild our public services and have strongly opposed the government’s immoral, unworkable and unlawful Asylum Bill.
“Only the Labour Party can end 13 years of damage the Tories have done to our country, reach zero-carbon power by 2030 and tackle the cost of living crisis. Labour will be fighting hard for every vote in Bristol and across the country to win an overall majority at the next election and kick the Tories out of power," she added.
Other boundary changes
As well as the creation of the new Bristol North East seat - which takes half of Bristol East from Lockleaze to Hillfields and adds it to half of the old Kingswood seat in Staple Hill, Kingswood and New Cheltenham, every single seat has some tweaks.
Perhaps the biggest is in Jacob Rees Mogg’s North East Somerset seat, which will be renamed North East Somerset and Hanham. It now includes for the first time areas of South Gloucestershire on the other side of the River Avon from Keynsham, including Hanham Green, Longwell Green, Cadbury Heath, Oldland and Oldland Common and up as far as Warmley, while traditional Labour areas like Midsomer Norton and Radstock are moving into a different constituency.
This means that voters in what has been the Kingswood constituency for the past couple of decades will find themselves either moved into the new Bristol North East seat - where Mayor Marvin Rees is hoping to be the Labour candidate, or into the new North East Somerset and Hanham constituency.
