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Lambeth Boundary Changes – What a Carve-up
November 14, 2011 1:35 PM
Pure logic may dictate that Lambeth is a bit of an oddball in Parliamentary Constituency terms.
However, the borough which is located just across the river from the Victorian Gothic parliamentary pile and which might just as well be another country, is an oddball that is steeped in history and home to one of the most vibrant and diverse populations in the Capital.
Many of its inhabitants fail to relate to the borough as a corporate entity, anyway, preferring the village identity of their immediate local area - and the very name Lambeth is probably more historically linked with its northerly marshy grazing lands for sheep.
In the mid 1960s chunks of Clapham and Streatham were carved out of neighbouring borough Wandsworth by the Boundary Commissioners in an attempt to make Lambeth look less like a sliver of real estate sandwiched between two greedy rivals.
Now the Boundary academics are at it again - only this time the poor old Lambeth Lamb is headed for the abattoir.
This time round they do not appear to want to fatten up the endangered beast but to slaughter it and dissipate the parts.
Lambeth's existing three distinct constituencies would disappear to be replaced with six which would not only straddle borough boundaries but make a complete nonsense of established communities.
What real local empathy would a resident of Waterloo have with someone down river in edgy Bermondsey, for instance? Or Balhamite with Battersea cousins? Or, still less, Gipsy Hill residents physically almost in Bromley with distant Tooting?
It's as though the Boundary commissioners have been on a wild night out and conceived a jolly good game of tearing up Lambeth into bits of paper, throwing them up in the air and seeing where the pieces fall on a map of the Capital.
To try to find some positives in the perplexing puzzle they've created, there's some merit in restoring an MP for Brixton but poor old Streatham is really thrown to the wolves.
Can anyone explain to us the logic let alone the sense in having three MP's to represent just one Town Centre or having the interests of Streatham Common overseen by an MP in Mitcham and Mordern?
Liberal Democrats are objecting to this crass proposal and urges local people to kick up a stink that will resonate in Whitehall.
Time for the Lamb to show its teeth.