Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Archive 5

Advance planning - "Post-Election Edit War Syndrome"

As some of you will be aware, elections leading to a change in power in other countries have had a tendency to spawn edit wars on Wikipedia concerning:

1. The actual results - sometimes users haven't even been waiting for the official declaration or media call and have just personally declared the incoming figures (or a prominent politician's comments) to be the result;
2. The point when power changes - a lot, including some of the relevant domestic media, seem to think that the election looking like it's going one way somehow magically changes all the office holders there and then;

...and the consequence of this is edit wars on the election pages themselves, on the biographies of the individuals involved, on all the pages about the position, on the articles about the place, even on transnational lists. And it often gets messy, with page protection often locking what is constitutionally the wrong version, and personal, with some users accusing others of being partisans "trying to cling on".

A discussion was started at Wikipedia:Post-election edit war syndrome in the aftermath of the Australian election in the hope of getting some covering solution in place.

Since the UK hasn't yet had a change of party government since Wikipedia started this problem hasn't yet hit us much yet, whilst our relatively fast declaration process (and the lack of "official provisional partial" figures) means that it's rare to have results disputes (although there are some potential issues here) but a new government taking office doesn't happen in an instant (and, as Gordon Brown's arrival at Number 10 showed, it's not always clear just who officially holds what job in the interim). As the next election isn't likely to be for a while I'd like to initiate a discussion now, before election fever sets in, in the hope of getting an advance consensus in place to handle any problem matters.

As I can see it the main potential problems are:

1. Seats getting called before the official declaration, usually by the media making projections from opinion polls and/or very early results but also sometimes by politicians themselves. Two notable moments in recent years were in 1997 when Jonathan Dimbleby told Simon Hughes on air that he had lost North Southwark and Bermondsey, only for Hughes to be returned with a good majority; and 2005 when Bob Marshall-Andrews predicted his own defeat on air to the cheers of both Conservatives and Tony Blair, only for BMA to retain Medway with a narrow majority. There's also the problem when some seats take for ever to declare and have several recounts - Winchester in 1997 took some twenty hours, one seat in 2005 (Crawley I think) had the count suspended for a while and went int two days, Northern Irish seats don't count until the next day and take an eternity and so forth. Whilst counting is going on it's not unusual for unofficial provisional figures to leak out and when a seat is a razor edge marginal reports about who has won can vary quite a bit.
2. It's not 100% clear if sitting MPs "stop" being the MP for the constituency between the dissolution of Parliament and the declaration of the individual result, or even not until they formally take the oath in the House of Commons. The rules of salaries, pensions and the Father of the House suggest they do not (as does a scene in Alan Clark's diaries where immediately after the 1992 dissolution is proclaimed in the Commons Clark - whop is standing down - tries to go into the Members' Bar but is blocked as he is "not a member anymore" whilst other MPs enter), but other rules suggest otherwise.
3. A government doesn't magically change just because the polls have closed, the media have called the result or even because the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition have claimed victory or defeat. It doesn't happen until the outgoing PM tenders his resignation to the Queen and she formally commissions a new one. It's also not really clear who runs the country in the middle of all of this - if there's a terrorist attack, who has the power to order a response?
4. If the Parliament is hung, as in February 1974, it's quite possible that what happens in actuality will not always reflect what the media and public believe has happened. At that time a lot of people assumed Harold Wilson had "won" the election and saw Edward Heath as trying to cling to office; others argued that Heath was within his rights to seek a coalition and remain in Downing Street while he tried. And visits to the Palace to keep the Queen updated confused the media further as they thought Heath was resigning.
5. The devolved Parliaments work slightly differently in that the voting systems used have nearly always delivered a hung outcome (and in Northern Ireland even when it's clear who the First Minister would be, there have still been lengthy negotiations to see if devolution will be restarted), but even without that the First Minister is formally nominated by a vote in the chamber. So it's more likely there will be someone who is clearly going to be First Minister but hasn't yet taken office for a bit.
6. Although party leaderships don't necessarily come within this ambit, though very often a general election defeat does lead to a leadership election in the main parties, it's worth noting that when in recent years the Conservative leader has stood down, the outgoing leader has remained in charged and carried out all the functions (e.g. Prime Minister's Questions) until a new leader has formally been declared. However in the both the last Liberal Democrat leadership elections the outgoing leader's resignation was with immediate effect and the Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary Party (a crucial distinction) acted as leader for the interim.

All of these could prove problematic but I hope that we can come up with some agreed positions for the main possibilities in advance that can serve as a consensus against post election edit warring. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:53, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Some interesting points... I'll organise my responses below numerically in the hope that we can keep things organised. --Neo (talk) 14:59, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

1. Calling Seats

My belief is that as British Election results are typically reported very fast (within 24h for most seats) no speculation on results or preliminary results should be reported on individual constituency pages. However, if a respected media commentator speculates upon a result (for instance the Dimbleby example above) then it may be appropriate to record this (as a newsworthy item in itself) but it should be clear this is speculative. --Neo (talk)

• Those of us who are Wikipedians and members of political parties likely to be at a counting of the votes will happily take a laptop to the Town Hall to provide live, as it happens results =). I really don't think there is any need at all for "provisional" results to be reported on constituency pages because, as you say, the results are often known within 24 hours - they are available as supplements in broadsheet 'papers on the next Saturday, if all else fails.

There should be a good enough network of people - including, alas, less Wiki-inclined party members I suppose - out there during the counting of the votes to get Wiki articles updated fairly quickly and accurately without the need to continously edit "it has been reported this seat is a Labour hold/Tory Gain blah blah". As ever, sense and reason should do us well. doktorb _words^deeds 10:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be no real need for us to attempt to duplicate the systems the broadcast media use to report results. Blogging at some count may scoop the on screen and teletext sources by a few seconds or minutes, but does that really make any difference? --Gary J (talk) 13:08, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

This one could be more of a problem than we previously thought. For those who haven't seen the recent news reports, a number of councils are planning to not count on the night itself but wait until the next day, in a reversal of recent trends (it used to be the case that many rural seats counted the following day because of the time to get the ballot boxes together). The main reasons given are that the recent huge growth in postal votes (which can be returned as late as polling day itself) means more time is needed for verification, whilst it's more usual for general elections to take place on the same day as council elections and this massively increases bureaucracy, especially in constituencies that cross council boundaries. So there probably will be a longer period than before of speculative and provisional results flying about for at least some constituencies and a bit more attention given to both exit polls and party claims on the basis of telling & tallying. I think we should, nevertheless, stick to only reporting actual declared results and not act like a news service to note overnight speculation before the result comes through. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but all we have until the offical result is exit polls and in recent elections they have not proved to be particularly accurate, possibly due to the sampling methods used. I think the real answer to this one is is WP:NOTNEWS. With the British system of an "official" declaration, the issue of calling seats that occurs in USA does not arise. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:28, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

2. The Status of MPs

I think just for convenience and to accord with people's perceptions we should continue to refer to MPs until they resign or a new member is elected. I.e. in a general election Mr. X is member for constituency Y up until the result for constituency Y is reported, whereupon the newly elected person will be the member for Y. --Neo (talk)

I would say that no one is an MP after a dissolution and before a general election, although there is (or was at one time - I am not sure of the current law) a possibility of a dissolved Parliament being revived on a demise of the Crown during a general election campaign. My view is that if someone who was an MP until the dissolution is re-elected in the general election (including a delayed poll because of the death of a nominated candidate in a constituency) then his or her service should be regarded as unbroken. However if the former MP was not re-nominated or was defeated, then his or her service should be treated as ending at the dissolution. --Gary J (talk) 19:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure sounds good. In terms of any forthcoming election I think we can agree that it is an unnecessary extravagance (and probably confusing to most users) to edit the page of every MP and constituency to reflect the fact that *technically* the office holder isn't an MP between dissolution and re-election, and it should be acceptable to refer to a new incumbent as such once the official count has been released even prior to them swearing allegiance to the Queen (if that is indeed the moment they formally become an MP). --Neo (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2007 (UTC) [My apologies that this was unclear as to meaning earlier - I really should proof read more].

I agree with the practical point that we do not need to mention the technical status as a non-MP of the incumbent MP after a dissolution. I think it is right that an MPs term strictly begins when he swears or affirms allegiance, as an MP who votes in Parliament before doing so vacates their seat. --Gary J (talk) 23:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

But that doesn't tally with the status of Sinn Féin members as MPs. Presumably it's a grey area, but the term must strictly begin with the Opening of Parliament? Warofdreams talk 00:07, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of different points when it might be said a person becomes an MP. (1) A person is elected to be an MP on the day of the election. Normally the votes are not fully counted and the result declared on the day of election itself, but it is sensible to regard that date as when someone is elected. (2) Thinking further about this the declaration of the result does use a phrase like "Y is duly elected to serve as the Member of Parliament for the X constituency". The question then is when does the service strictly begin. (3) I think it is arguable that it starts from the day of the new Parliament first assembling. The five year term of a Parliament starts with the first meeting, not the date of election. (4) Then we have the point that for MPs to have the full powers of the office they have to swear/affirm allegiance. For the purposes of our articles I think the date of election can be used as the date when someone becomes an MP in a particular Parliament. For someone who serves without a break in successive Parliaments I would date this between the dates of first election and the dissolution of the last of the Parliaments. --Gary J (talk) 16:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I should also note that the idea that between the dissolution and, at least, the election there are no MPs is possibly not 100% legally accurate. The position of Father of the House would clearly fall to pieces if all the continuous services were "reset" every general election, whilst MPs who unsuccessfully contest the election are, I believe, still paid and get a slightly bigger pension entitlement than one of identical service who stands down that time. I vaguely recall reading of one outgoing MP in about 1992 who got the nomination in an absolutely hopeless constituency in order to highlight this. (There's also the scene in the Diaries of Alan Clark where immediately after the dissolution is proclaimed he finds he is no longer an MP but others are allowed into the Member's Bar.) When Patrick Cormack had a postponed poll in his seat at the last election there was some investigation as to what the interim situation was (and whether or not he's lost his place near the front of the queue to be Father of the House) but I think the situation was that he remained the sort-of-MP for South Staffordshire until the delayed poll was held.

With regards the Sinn Féin situation this is more confused because of some recent changes designed to reflect the fact they were elected but don't take the oath. As I understand it they're not eligible for the salary until they take the oath, but were they to do it then I think their pay would be backdated to at least the start of the Parliament. As they're very unlikely to actually do this it's hard to say for sure. They do now (controversially) get an office allowance for constituency work. Whether or not they should strictly be putting "MP" after their name is unclear.

In terms of practicalities, I think it would be excessively anal (and potentially not on the most solid of grounds) to edit 650 odd biographies and constituency articles to declare that somone is now the "former" MP for that constituency, only to reverse most of these afterwards (and where they're unsuccessful we'd have to edit the articles anyway to link to their successors). How about:

Where a sitting MP stands down we can say they're no longer the MP from the point of dissolution and edit accordingly.

When they are contesting the same seat again we consider them to still be the current MP and only edit this if & when they lose their seats.

If they contest a different constituency, either because boundary changes have done a renaming or because they're transferring to a different area (e.g. George Galloway is moving from Bethnal Green & Bow to have a try at Poplar & Limehouse) then I guess the easiest thing is to consider them the MP for the old named seat until the election results.

...and if an edit war breaks out on particular pages then this should be the agreed position, with people encouraged to discuss the matter centrally rather than spray inconsistency. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:55, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

One further point of note is that there is no requirement for any minister to be a member of either House of Parliament and sometimes a sitting Cabinet minister will retire from the Commons at the election - Patrick Mayhew, Mo Mowlam and Paul Boateng are, I believe, the most recent examples. All remained in the Cabinet until the post election reshuffle, despite clearly no being MPs by any understanding at the end of it. Remember also that a minister losing their seat does not automatically mean they vacate office (they could be transferred to the Lords as did at least one of the 1992 defeats, come back in a Commons by-election or even serve as a minister outside Parliament as some past law officers have) and it certainly isn't a "magic wand" vacation of ministerial the second the Returning Officer declares their seat. Timrollpickering (talk) 16:02, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Another thought - in the modern era gaps between Parliaments are only for a few weeks. In earlier times long delays in calling a new Parliament were common. I suppose the most famous example was the eleven years gap in the Parliaments of King Charles I. It would surely be very strange to regard someone, who was an MP in both successive Parliaments, as having been an MP in the intervening eleven years; or arguing that a member from the first Parliament only ceased to be an MP when the next Parliament was elected. The principle remains the same, despite modern perks like continuing the salary for a time after the dissolution. --Gary J (talk) 21:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that this status is uneffected by legislation which has been passed in the intervening three hundred and seventy years or so, such as those requiring regular meetings of Parliament, those placing a cap on the length of parliaments, etc.?

On ministers being members of either House of Parliament, this is only a convention not a law. In any event the convention is not that the minister must be in Parliament when appointed, but that if not the minister must acquire membership within a few months. As is pointed out above law officers were not always in Parliament. There were also some examples, during the First World War, of members of the government who were not in the UK Parliament. A noteable example was Jan Smuts, who was a member of the War Cabinet (1917-19) when serving as a member of the South African Parliament, not the UK one. --Gary J (talk) 22:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to add to the debate and maybee clarify it a bit BBC news has this to say: "After dissolution there are no longer any MPs, although ministers keep their jobs during the election campaign." but I agree we go and edit every single page on Monday that would be silly. I also believe from reading somewhere that as ministers are appointed by the crown their positions are unaffected in the interim. --Wintonian (talk) 14:38, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

3. Governments and PMs

Again its not too important as this will probably happen within 24h, however I'd say that Gordon Brown remains PM until he resigns (as the PM doesn't have to be head of the largest party, or even a member of the house of commons IIRC). --Neo (talk)

Yes this is less of a problem for PMs, although one side effect for other ministers is that an incoming PM doesn't always appoint everyone to the exact portfolio they shadowed and sometimes the government can take a few days to be fully announced (and the media keep calling the posts wrong). Some clarity as to exactly what does and doesn't count as definite sourcing of an appointment (I'm not sure individual ministers even bother trooping to the palace to "kiss hands" and collect seals anymore) will be useful, though endless rounds of edit wars on exactly who's been given Culture, Media & Sport and whether or not the post is being retitled is not the most serious of problems. There was a bit of debate as to whether or not Gordon Brown was both PM and Chancellor for a bit and even as to what was on his page between TB leaving the palace and GB going there! Timrollpickering (talk) 15:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that when a PMs resignation takes effect, this is treated as being the resignation of all the members of the government. Until that point the PM and Ministers retain the full legal powers of their offices, although by convention they act as caretakers if not re-elected. If, say, an immediate devaluation was required then I imagine the outgoing ministers would act as agents for the the about to be appointed government. It is perfectly normal for a new Prime Minister to be appointed, but for other ministerial posts to be left vacant for a day or two. The policy of Twentieth-Century British Political Facts 1900-2000 about dates of ministerial appointments is to cite the date when it was announced in The Times, unless the news received wide publicity the previous day. I presume the second option is more relevant in the modern era, so the basic authority for the date of appointment is presumably the announcement on the 10 Downing Street web site (unless Mr Smug has just walked out of 10 Downing Street and announced to the assembled media that he has been appointed Secretary of State for Paperclips, before the website has caught up with this breaking news). --Gary J (talk) 18:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

4. Hung Parliaments

As above I'd guess that the former PM remains PM until he tenders a resignation, and the Queen invites the head of the largest party to attempt to form a government (or whatever the formal procedure is). --Neo (talk)

There are no formal procedures, just conventions that may or may not be followed. The strict law is that the Prime Minister remains PM until he resigns or is dismissed (see my comment in the previous section). The outcome of an election makes no legal difference to the PMs position. Even the concept that a PM who loses the confidence of the House of Commons (or never has it in a new Parliament) should resign is only a convention, not a strict legal requirement. I have explored the history of hung Parliaments in the UK in Balance of power (parliament). To summarise; the older conventions suggest that if there is no clear majority then the incumbent PM can, if he wishes, meet Parliament and see if there is a majority against him on the government's Queen's speech. Sometimes the PM decides to resign immediately. If the incumbent loses in Parliament or resigns there is then a convention that the largest opposition party should be given the first chance to form a government. If the leaders of the two largest parties both fail to get the confidence of Parliament, then we would be in uncharted territory. In principle the Queen's duty is to secure a Prime Minister who can obtain supply (taxes and appropriations) to keep the government running. A subsidiary duty is to avoid too frequent elections. I therefore presume that some attempt would be made to find some government which could keep things going for a few months at least. Whilst that attempt was made the PM in possession of office would presumably continue on a caretaker basis. You can see how this works by looking at what has happened in Belgium since the last election there. Basically if a Parliament was so fragmented that even a viable minority government could not be formed there would have to be a new general election. The real problem arises if the second general election has the same inconclusive result. The politicians might have to consider a coalition then. --Gary J (talk) 18:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, the most recent example of this is Heath, who hung on for several days after the February 1974 election, seeing if he could talk the Liberals into coalition, before giving up, and per convention, the Queen called upon Wilson to form a government, which he did.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:16, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

It was my understanding that a resigning Prime Minister advised the Queen to send for some one else (such as the leader of the opposition) to form a government. I think that person becomes Prime Minister (or strictly First Lord of the Treasury) upon accepting that challenge. This might result in him having to form a minority government, which would remain in office for a while, probably to be followed by an early election, as in 1950-1, 1964-6, and 1974. Most of these did not involve minorities, but thin majorities. In 1979, there was a minority governement, which was allowed by the other parites to remain in office until all the opposition parties decided together that they wanted an election soon and called a vote of no confidence. If a Prime Minister seeks to stay in office after that, he is liable to find himself being impeached, but that has not happened for hundreds of years. Peterkingiron (talk) 00:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes . . . that is true with respect to a PM after an election loss, he advises the Queen (as if she doesn't know) who to send for. And nowadays, a PM stepping down without an election waits until after the leadership election of his own party, and advises the Queen to send for the winner (after the difficulties with Conservative succession in the 1950s and 1960s . . . ) Where things would get interesting is if a PM died in office . . . the office of Deputy Prime Minister probably does not limit the Queen's prerogative, and she'd have to appoint at least a caretaker pending a leadership election. . .--Wehwalt (talk) 01:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

5. Devolved Assemblies

As I said above, there's a formal vote in all three to nominate the First Minister. I'm less sure if the FM takes office the moment the result is declared or if they officially take office (and the legal right to exercise their powers) at some other point. The main problem I can see here is that the Parliaments are more likely to be "hung" and this creates a clash of expectations between "the party with the most seats is the winner" belief with "the executive will be chosen by negotiation between parties" approach - for instance after the last Welsh Assembly election there was serious talk of a three-party coalition of Plaid, Conservatives & Lib Dems whilst Labour got the most seats. Luckily in those circumstances Labour were the incumbents, but this kind of expectations (and media declarations) can encourage the false belief that someone else has got power. I'm not sure the British media and political junkies have yet made up their mind as to what defines "winning" an election which doesn't give a single party majority, so it's even harder to talk about "First Minister-elects" than it is with, say, Australia between November 25th and December 2nd where Kevin Rudd was the winner of the latest election but had not yet taken office and listing him as such was the solution to the revert wars. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it the Queen has to appoint the First Minister nominated by the Scottish Parliament. It is probably the same in Wales. Northern Ireland may be different. I do not imagine the republicans would want the Queen to be involved as little as possible in the devolved arrangements.

I see the First Minister of Scotland article confirms my understanding. Alex Salmond was nominated as First Minister by the Scottish Parliament on one day, subsequently had his appointment formally approved by the Queen and then was sworn in as First Minister (before the Court of Session) on the day after the nomination. Salmond was therefore the First Minister elect, when selected as the Parliament's nominee for formal approval by the Queen and actually became First Minister when he was sworn in.

As to the inability of the British (or perhaps only English) media and public to comprehend a non-majoritarian political system, that is largely a matter of habit and inexperience. When all elections in the UK and particularly England use fair votes, then it will be understood that the rules of the political game have changed. In a legislature elected by a proportional representation system, in which no party has or is likely to have a majority, everyone will just have to wait and see who "wins" government. It will not just be a matter of saying that the X Party has the most seats, so they must form a minority government or be the leading element in a coalition. --Gary J (talk) 18:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

6. Party Leadership

We should definitely follow party practice here, whatever that may be. If someone doesn't have a formal title during the time between resignation and the appointment of a new leader, then I think 'outgoing leader' sounds like a fine term to use. --Neo (talk)

It's stepping into pedantry but as I understand it in the Conservatives normally the formal resignation is timed to take effect only when the successor has actually been elected and the situation is the same even if the sitting leader is no confidenced (as happened to Iain Duncan Smith in 2003). The outgoing leader retains all powers, such as the leader's seat on internal party committees and various hiring & firing powers as appropriate that may need to be exercised in the interim. I believe the normal situation for the Lib Dems is the same - certainly Paddy Ashdown remained leader until Charles Kennedy was declared elected rather than Alan Beith standing in - and I'd guess the reason for Kennedy and Campbell going "with immediate effect" & the deputy leaders acting as leader has much more to with the circumstances of their downfall than the formal practice. Timrollpickering (talk) 16:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Although I note that Nicol Stephen is not leading the Scottish Lib Dems at all now and his deputy Michael Moore has stepped up. Do the Lib Dem rules now require a departing leader to step down immediately? Timrollpickering (talk) 21:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

7. Directly elected Mayors

I'm not entirely sure when a newly elected Mayor actually takes office - in the event of Ken Livingston losing the London election this May exactly when will he be replaced by his successor? Timrollpickering (talk) 19:24, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak to the UK situation, obviously, but in Canada there's still a transition period of about two to three weeks before a new mayor is sworn in. Inevitably, however, the relevant articles are afflicted with the same gun-jumping problem as provincial or federal elections. Bearcat (talk) 15:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

The Greater London Authority Act 1999 specifies the following:-

28 Declaration of acceptance of office (1) A person elected to the office of Mayor or of an Assembly member shall not act in that office unless— (a) he has made a declaration of acceptance of the office in a form prescribed in an order made by the Secretary of State; and (b) within two months from the day of the election, the declaration has been delivered to the proper officer of the Authority. (2) If such a declaration is not made and delivered to that officer within that time, the office of the person elected shall become vacant at the expiration of that time. --Gary J (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Tagging articles

 Done The {{UK Parliamentary Constituencies}} exists for application to the talk pages of articles within this project's scope, but so far it is attached to only about 600 of the 2000+ UK constituency articles. It seems to me to be a good idea to tag to the remaining articles and categories so that people know we are here; this will probably be particularly relevant as we approach the next election.

I now have a bot (BHGbot (talk · contribs)) which is authorised for this sort of job, and I think that this would be an appropriate use of it. I have defined the job at User:BHGbot/Job0004, complete with a list of the articles to be tagged at User:BHGbot/Job0004/List.

Any objections to my going ahead and having the bot do this? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The idea of using a bot for this is very sensible. If we have this tag for some constituency articles it ought to be on all of them. --Gary J (talk) 23:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Now done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

That's excellent. Related to it, I've created Category:WikiProject UK Parliamentary Constituencies and Category:WikiProject UK Parliamentary Constituencies articles (to be used on namespace pages and article talk pages) to keep track of pages related to this project. Warofdreams talk 18:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Sitting Prime Minister category

I have just discovered Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies represented by a sitting Prime Minister, which has been created and populated by Wehwalt (talk · contribs), who has also been adding succession boxes on that subject to each constituency article.

It seems to me that the succession boxes are an informative, if slightly trivial idea, and should probably stay, but my initial inclination is that the category is probably a case of over-categorisation where a list would be better. I will ask Wehwalt to join a discussion here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm indifferent. Since I did the succession boxes first, a category seemed a quick and easy way of collecting the 39 qualifying constituencies. But a list would also give the opportunity to explain the times when there was no "incumbent", i.e. a P.M. from the Lords, or when Douglas-Home renounced his peerage and had to run for a seat in a by-election. I'll leave it to the wisdom of editors. Naturally, I agree the succession boxes should stay.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:11, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I think a list would be better too, in part because it could list the PMs as well as constituencies. I see Bath is in the cat, but I can't work out for which MP/PM - so a list would be less puzzling! Rwendland (talk) 15:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

If editors think it's a good idea, I'll work on the list. I've at least gone over the material recently. And Bath was William Pitt the Elder (Earl of Chatham), who kissed hands on 30 July 1766 and stayed an MP for two weeks before he was given a peerage so he could be Lord Privy Seal as well as PM (conventions in those days were different).--Wehwalt (talk) 15:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Great work. Your info about Bath & William Pitt is so deliciously interesting, I've taken the liberty of adding it to Bath (UK Parliament constituency). Rwendland (talk) 22:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I've created the article for the list, it is List of UK Parliament constituencies represented by sitting Prime Ministers. I've only put the 18th Century material in so far and will await comment. It is basically a crib of the UK Prime Minister list. To make it more focused on the constituency, we could certainly put in the county or other info regarding the constituency. Play around with it, I'm not good at wikiformatting. Once the dust has settled, I'll put in the last 206 years or so of material. It is tedious but not difficult.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:29, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I am basically happy with what you are doing, but there are a few points of detail which may need to be considered.

1. I query if it can be said that an MP, particularly a person who changes seat like Pitt the Younger, was contiuously an MP. We are having a discussion above on this page, about when an MPs term ends. I am of the view that an MP ceases to have that status immediately a dissolution takes place. I note that the Canadian Parliament web-site, includes pages of MPs details. Those pages list service in each Parliament, from election to dissolution (or whatever if the MP left the House before a dissolution), separately. I think that is the correct approach, if you are identifying exact days when a Prime Minister was MP for a constituency, as your article seems to aim to do. It may be difficult, before just about all contests in a general election were on the same day starting in 1918, to confirm the exact day of election in any particular constituency. However I know the day when each relevant general election ended and when the Parliaments first assembled, so those dates could be used if you want to simplify the research.

2. Another point is that prior to (as I recall) 1926, when an MP accepted an office of profit under the crown (such as First Lord of the Treasury for almost all Prime Ministers), they automatically vacated their parliamentary seat and had to be re-elected at a by-election.

--Gary J (talk) 17:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I understand what you are saying on all points. I agree that, technically, all MPs lose their seats on dissolution, that "Election Day" was neither a single day nor a specific day until recent times, and that you do have the ministerial problem. There are other questions, such as when an MP takes up his seat (Did Heath really represent Sidcup in those four days between the election and his resignation? Parliament didn't meet, after all). That is going to be the problem in putting the list together. It may be well to list continuous service, but list the dissolutions in the "notes" section. As, say, for Finchley, you'd list Thatcher's service, but have the dissolution to election dates in 1983 and 1987 in the notes section. I think the only other seat switcher while remaining PM other than Pitt and possibly Heath, was Attlee. All this isn't as easy as it looks!--Wehwalt (talk) 17:15, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

On the latter point there's also Woodford in 1945 - I think Churchill's own declaration (in the now divided seat) preceded him formally tendering his resignation, plus with the three week delay for counting it makes the whole question of when someone starts being the MP more than a matter of semantics in a week. (I'm also not 100% convinced that sitting MPs standing again stop being MPs at the moment of dissolution - see my comments above - which makes trying to turn this into a hard and fast rule potentially bordering on OR.) Also on the new minister's by-election thing, IIRC the law was modified in 1919 to give nine months grace after a general election, before being wound up in 1926. No sitting PM ever lost their seat under this law (although some did at earlier points in their career) and I don't think any served as PM for such a brief period that they were never actually an MP for the duration (unlike the Canadian PM Arthur Meighen during his brief second term when defeats in the Commons, the general election and his own seat all occurred rapidly) and possible other examples internationally). Timrollpickering (talk) 19:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a little too picky. They counted on the 26th, Churchill resigned on the 27th. I guess he represented Woodford as PM in '45 long enough for a couple of stiff drinks and the drive to the Palace. A little too de minimus for me. Heath at least continued to exercise the office and tried to form a coalition.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Issues with Cleveland Constituencies

The info boxes for constituencies in Cleveland redirect to Cleveland Ohio when clicking on the Cleveland link. They should redirect to Cleveland%2C_England 82.13.188.198 (talk) 10:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I've had a go at Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (UK Parliament constituency) - it's inelegant but does point to the right page. Problem is that the place where "Cleveland" appears is the "entity" field, which doesn't seem to allow for a piped link of [[Cleveland, England|Clevland]]. Does anyone know how to fix it better? I won't change the other 5 for now in case there's a better way to do it! PamD (talk) 12:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

PS There seems no point in going again round the much-trodden debate of whether Cleveland should redirect to Cleveland (disambiguation) (often argued) or to Cleveland, England (no chance) instead of to Cleveland, Ohio. Even if it led to the dab page it wouldn't be good in these infoboxes. We need some way to pipe the link, or will just have to put up with "Cleveland, England" appearing. PamD (talk) 12:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

How about County of Cleveland? I have tried it in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (UK Parliament constituency) and there was already a re-direct from County of Cleveland to the Cleveland, England article. --Gary J (talk) 15:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Forty shilling freeholders in Parliamentary Boroughs

There appears to be a difference of opinion about whether such freeholds conferred a county vote before 1832. I had understood that the Reform Act 1832 conferred a county vote on non-resident Forty Shilling Freeholders in Parliamentary Boroughs (which were not counties of themselves, where the freeholders voted in the borough). I had not understood that forty shilling freeholds in parliamentary boroughs had conferred a county vote before the Reform Act. My source was Electoral Reform in England and Wales, by Charles Seymour (David & Charles Reprints 1970.

I may have misunderstood the pre-1832 law. If so could someone please provide a source to confirm the position. There is however a footnote on page 13 of Seymour that "According to the early system, the same persons seem to have participated in the election of knights and burgesses ...", which seems to suggest that did not happen at the time of the Reform Act. --Gary J (talk) 19:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, freeholders in the boroughs could vote in the counties except in most (but not all) of the towns and cities that were counties of themselves. The clearest source I know is John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (Cambridge University Press, 1973), who not only explains the law but cites figures for the votes from each town in each county, taken from the pollbooks at pre-Reform elections. I think the confusion arises from the fact that abolishing these votes was widely discussed at the time of the Reform Act, and I have seen several discussions of this which make it appear to be the status quo when it was not. I will try to get further references to verify this in detail. Rgmmortimore (talk) 14:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. None of the books I have looked at gives a clear explanation of the issue. If you can produce a list of the boroughs, whose freeholders voted in the borough instead of the county, then I can amend some of the county constituency articles I have done. --Gary J (talk) 18:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

There were 19 counties corporate at the time of the Reform Act. According to Cannon, the position was this: Three of these - Canterbury, Poole and Southampton - had the right to vote in their counties like other boroughs. In five, the borough freeholders could not vote in the county but the franchise gave the freeholders the vote in the borough - Bristol, Haverfordwest, Lichfield, Norwich and Nottingham. The remaining 11 were the only places in England and Wales where 40 shilling freeholders were excluded from voting completely (unless, of course, they qualified for some other franchise): Carmarthen, Chester, Coventry, Exeter, Gloucester, Hull, Lincoln, London, Newcastle upon Tyne, Worcester and York. Porritt agrees with most of this, but states that in Carmarthen also the freeholders voted under the borough franchise, and that some of the freeholders in York did. At least they agree on the 16 that could not vote in the county.

But I think the county of the town/city did not necessarily coincide exactly with the borough boundaries - Cannon certainly seems to imply that this was the case in York, though I have not yet found a solid statement of it; and it looks from Youngs' listing of local admin boundaries as if Sculcoates parish was in Hull county but not Hull borough, which would have meant that it was not within any parliamentary constituency at all. But that may be an error, unless I can find it verified somewhere else. Rgmmortimore (talk) 20:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for summarising the position. --Gary J (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Data Integration with Public Whip

Let me say I had no idea that this scheme of constituency pages existed to this level of completion and sophistication; I obviously wasn't paying enough attention. I am in awe. It puts my meagre efforts to shame.

To get straight to the point, I am trying to develop an election calculator widget system on my website. The current version looks like this: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/election2008.php I was hunting for a list of candidates per constituency, and seem to have found it.

In case anyone is unaware, the full set of data files behind TheyWorkForYou and Public Whip is described in http://ukparse.kforge.net/parlparse/ These contain XML files of MPs and constituencies (including common misspellings) that are used to process the Parliamentary Hansard text. There is a special case for the ministerial offices which are recorded by time lapse downloads of the official webpage of the government.

To me, this appears as a huge duplication -- there is absolutely no reason these data sets should not use the same basic ids, or even for our set to be derived by downloading and processing the wikipedia data. This would be what I need to save wasting my time gathering candidate data that is already being done by a team of wikipedians. Please leave a note if you want to discuss this, or are able to answer questions about what types of tweaks would be acceptable to the templates, or have already written some scripts to process these wikipedia pages. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone is ahead of me.

The main idea is to create an automated webpage that (in true mySociety fashion (I am not a member, but I know them)) takes your postcode (to find the constituency), adds a few of your choices and Parliamentary voting information, and prints out one sheet of paper of your own that you can carry around for yourself during the election campaign. Usually you have to rely only on some ugly party-generated election literature to know about the choices. But here anyone could make their own personalized campaign sheet in a matter of minutes, and maybe distribute it among their closest friends independently of any party organization. It's also meant to include one or two thoroughly reprehensible votes that the MP did during the previous term which have all but been forgotten that, maybe, someone might ask them about during the hustings.

Obviously the wikipedia page would work as a very good baseline with its beautiful maps, summarized electoral information, and with the historical data stripped out. Is this an attractive idea to anyone? Goatchurch (talk) 22:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to this project. I have no objection to your plan so long as it complies with the licence provisions about copying (a note about which is I think accessible from every article), although someone more familiar with the technical arrangements would have to tell you if it is feasible.

You join us at a major milestone in this project. As far as I can see we now have some sort of article for every UK Parliament constituency which has ever existed. I have just finished a list of MPs for Northamptonshire from 1640-1832. This appears to be the last constituency article to be started. There is still much to do to bring all articles up to the standard of the best, but we can perhaps congratulate ourselves with having reached the end of the beginning of the project. --Gary J (talk) 19:51, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

In the last few months, I have been devoting most of my energies to Irish articles, so I missed this milestone ... but huge congrats to all involved. I just did a quick count, and notice that there are nearly 3,000 constituency articles, and considering how many of them include carefully-linked list of MPs, election results etc, it represents a massive amount of work.

Obviously, there is a lot more left to do, but the basic framework is now in place, and in many cases the existing content goes way beyond the basic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Barnsley East and Mexborough (UK Parliament constituency)

I have noticed - how late! - that the now perfectly fine and created Barnsley East constituency still does not (technically) have an article here; the redirect from BEaM still exists. As I have no idea how to "untangle" a redirect, can someone sort it out?

Cheers

doktorb _words^deeds 19:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

As requested I have eliminated the re-directs from Barnsley East and Barnsley East (UK Parliament constituency) to Barnsley East and Mexborough (UK Parliament constituency). I have also adapted the intro para from the BE & M article, so there is some content to start off the BE constituency article, which I presume you intend to work on.

The way to amend an existing re-direct is to click on the link to the re-direct article which appears under the title of the article you have been re-directed to. That takes you to the re-direct article itself. The re-direct article can then be amended after clicking edit this page in the usual way.

I hope this helps. --Gary J (talk) 20:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course now someone has reverted the re-direct links, so again everything leads to the BE & M article. Presumably the idea is that at the time of the next election the main article will be Barnsley East and BE & M will then be converted to a redirect. --Gary J (talk) 12:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

This makes no sense! Why is this being done when every other constituency is fine to have its article? I have added candidates for the new Barnsley East, is that not notable enough? doktorb _words^deeds 11:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

We have long tried to apply a one-name-one-article rule to all the constituency articles. Barnsley East should be a separate article to Barnsley East and Mexborough, and the 83-87 period should be covered in BE rather than in BE+M. ---BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well both Barnsley East, and Sheffield South East, seem to suffer from this problem. Given that this is a) inaccurate, and b) incredibly frustrating, I have now come up against a brick wall. I have tried to re-edit/re-create Barnsley East but with no success. Candidates have been declared for both, leaving me with information I know to be valid but with nowhere to put it! Can /someone/ please look into a) re-creating the articles, and b) finding out who is creating the re-directs, to advise them to stop? doktorb _words^deeds 18:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I have recreated Barnsley East as a stub, replacing the redirect - needs more content, some of which presumably needs to be removed from BE&M and a bit of tidying up to be done. Over to you. PamD (talk) 18:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

... and have added more content and tweaked the BE&M article to match. PamD (talk) 19:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Sheffield South East (UK Parliament constituency)

Thanks to everyone who has helped above, I do appriciate it :). Now, the same is true of Sheffield Attercliffe, which becomes S. South East from the next election. To avoid the kind of mess I got myself in above, I have begun the "confirmed candidates for the next election table" on S. Attercliffe, using the label "Sheffield South East". If someone could (re)create Sheffield South East for me, that would be fantastic, as any copy and paste of information can include those candidates now confirmed.

Thanks again for the help on this, guys, we work well here :) doktorb _words^deeds 17:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

All done...I think

Thanks for the help guys on the above, I think it should all be sorted now. Cross fingers...doktorb _words^deeds 10:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject politcs of the United Kingdom

There is now a (very new) project which is related to this one, at Wikipedia:WikiProject politics of the United Kingdom. If any user wishes to contribute or to get the project up and running then sign up! =) Rossenglish (talk) 20:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Hereford

Could some one who has access to the relevant sources please complete the list of MPs for the borough constiuency of Hereford? This currently only has a list of relatively recent members - or is there a separate page that I have missed because it is not correctly categoriesed? Peterkingiron (talk) 00:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Rayment lists them back to 1660 here PamD (talk) 09:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Template: UKWard

Hi all

I am very interested in using the UKWard template for a series of articles for my native Preston. I think it could really work to "tie in" constituency articles with drilled-down ward level pages. However I don't know who to contact with regards the maps - who is it, or else h ow can I design the Wiki-style maps used in the templates?

Cheers doktorb _words^deeds 18:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Seems to me the template should be named "Englandward". Also, I note that ward boundaries do not necessarily change at the same time as constituency boundaries, and although constitucies are usually defined to consist of whole wards later changes to ward boundaries can cause wards to straddle constituency boundaries. It appears to me the template may be based on some invalid assumptions about ward boundaries. Please see Politics of the Highland council area and how that links to articles about wards. Laurel Bush (talk) 16:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC).

I have grave doubts on the value of article on particular wards. In urban areas, these are put together by the boundary commission as a matter of convenience, in order to provide equal electorates for councillors. The result is that their areas often have little historical unity or community cohesion. In my own district many wards are a civil parish or group of them, but one village (a civil parish) is divided between four district wards, with the result that it has to have four parish wards. I would thus discourage articles on wards (as such) and encourage them instead on recognisable communities. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, but in the case of Preston, there are only a handful of parishes, leaving the rest of the city warded. Districts of Sheffield, where I got the idea, seems to work because of the historic nature of the wards there. However saying that, there are some recognisible communities within Preston with articles already here, where I have merged the ward info rather then create a separate article. doktorb _words^deeds 08:15, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

In that case, I would suggest that you work on a Districts of Preston article or series on a similar basis. The Sheffield article starts by naming the six townships of the ancient parish of Sheffield, but ignoring that the city has absorbed the parish of Ecclesfield and Chapelry of Bradfield. I think that the city is now coterminous with Hallamshire. In listing the wards, with the communities within them, it does not link these to ancient townships in which they lie. I know Dudley rather better than Sheffield. For various reasons, many of the ancient parish boundaries remained intact until 1974, but the recent subsequent reorganisation has in several cases cut across them. In Birmingham in the 1970s, it was desired to define the extent of the ancient parish of Aston, but this could only be done on the basis of the ecclesiastical parishes into which it was divided, not by wards though they are potentially more accessible (via the electoral register. However, do not let me discourage you from producing material on individual localities on some rational basis. This will show up which areas have articles already and which need them. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

County and Regional articles

See Category:Lists of UK Parliamentary constituencies in England. We seem to have two series of articles: List of Parliamentary Consituencies in Foo, which is usually only about the changes between the last and next election. For Staffordshire, I started adding a list of historic seats List of Parliamentary constituencies in Staffordshire, but it seemed it would be better as a table, so I stopped. I then looked around for what else there was and found Parliamentary representation from Devon, which is an excellent article covering the subject historically, as well as List of Parliamentary constituencies in Devon, probably under the former title. Should these series not be merged? Lists are generally sterile articles once missing articles are created, and should be removed or converted to a more useful function, once everything is in categories. Peterkingiron (talk) 10:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I started the articles setting out lists and tables of historic constituencies, in traditional counties. The other set of articles concentrates on the modern era. If maps could be done for the seats in each distribution I suppose the articles could be combined. However there may be a mismatch between the boundaries of the historical counties and those used as the basis for modern constituencies. I suppose it all depends what information should be included in an ideal article of this type.

I think both types of articles fill an overlapping but different need, for summaries over the whole of an areas parliamentary history and for the current position. I see a major role of list articles as providing an index, to link readers to the detailed narrative articles. However I do not object to adding text, to provide an overview of the representation and perhaps to mention major personalities who have sat in Parliament for the county. --Gary J (talk) 13:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I till think that the two series wold be better being merged. I would see no objection to having the current position first, followed by a historical one. I do not think that changes in county boundaries need be a severe problem. Generally the counties of 1300 and 1973 were the same. There was some tidying up in 1845 and the 1930s to provide simpler boundaries, but that was on a much smaller scale than county constituencies. It is a probelm to know what to so with the new post-1974 counties, such as West Midlands and Merseyside, but would suggest that they should not be provided with much pre-1974 history, merely cross-references. In my view, the articles should generally not go much beyond lists and tables. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Stub types for British Members of Parliament

Hi all - I have initiated a discussion into possible changes to the stub categories for stubs relating to biographies of British members of Parlaiment at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion#Various MP categories. These changes will not affect the stubs themselves, but would clarify some issues with category naming and scope. Please feel free to add your opinions to the discussion - any additions from people working on this topic would be appreciated. Grutness...wha? 01:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Grutness for the notice. I have posted a long reply at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion#Various MP categories, but I would strongly encourage other editors to join in. The changes which Grutness proposes are actually quite far-reaching, and IMRHO most of them would have a seriously negative effect on the useability of the stub categories, as well as adding significantly to category clutter. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Wolverhampton lists

Yesterday I finally snapped and decided to fix what was Former Wolverhampton MPs, moving it to List of Members of Parliament for Wolverhampton and generally trying to sort it out. It occurred to me that it is duplicating, or at least overlapping with (in function and content), List of Parliamentary constituencies in Wolverhampton. I'm not sure, however, what a merged article should be called, or would look like. Any suggestions? --RFBailey (talk) 16:27, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

There could be a table? I'm rubbish at drawing them from scratch, but it could show the years as a heading, under which are the columns "constituency" "member" "party", with changes in MP/party as required...So from the top down, the years of boundary changes, under which the constituency, under which are the MPs...? It would probably be best to nerge these articles because they are so similiar it seems silly to have them separate. doktorb _words^deeds 07:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

One way to do this might be to adapt the general style of United States congressional delegations from Louisiana. --Gary J (talk) 13:48, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Index of article on UK Parliament constituencies in England

Is there any reason not to WP:MOVE this to "... Index of articles ..."? Part 2 is already at Wikipedia:Index of articles on UK Parliament constituencies in England N-Z. I'd have raised it on the article talkpage, but there's nothing there except the project banner so this seemed a better place to discuss! PamD (talk) 11:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems totally uncontroversial. Perhaps the "A-M" should be appended at the same time, with a kind of disambiguation page directing readers to the two pages. --RFBailey (talk) 14:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Fixed: see here for details. --RFBailey (talk) 16:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Scottish Liberal Democrats Metacolour

The colour of the Scottish Liberal Democrats has recently been changed to give two differing shades for the National Party and the Scottish one. I would appreciate it if people would give their thoughts on this in the discussion I have started on the above talk page. Thanks. Galloglass 15:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

If there are no objections then I will revert to the original colour that is used nationally for the Liberal Democrats. - Galloglass 08:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I can see absolutely no reason for the Scottish state party of the Liberal Democrats to be given a different colour to the Welsh state party and the Party in England. The Liberal Democrats have a federal party structure, but there is no need to distinguish between candidates in the different parts of the UK. Accordingly I agree with the proposal to revert to the same colour throughout the UK. --Gary J (talk) 09:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved this section from the archives as when I've come to implement the change Barryob has objected. I think this is the best place to conduct it as most of the involved editors are part of the project here. Unfortunately I'm a little too busy at work at the moment to actually take part but I hope to be able to contribute more next week or so. Thanks - Galloglass 23:30, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

As a member of the Liberal Democrats, I agree with Gallo here. Our Party is built on a Federal basis, but the different parts are not entirely separate. "Arms length" maybe a good description. For all a shaded box matters, all LibDem party colours should be the same, even if it just for making it easier to see "what links here" when reviewing LibDem articles. doktorb _words^deeds 06:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The scots lib dems use a different shade shade of orange from the UK party on their website [1] --Barryob (Contribs) (Talk) 17:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I fully accept that, even if it is rather a very pedantic point! This is Wikipedia, and amongst other things, Wiki is not the Liberal Democrat website. As an encyclopedic record of electoral results, Wiki would be better suited to using the same colours where necessary to allow for easy comparison or collation of votes. By all means refer to the different colour on the Liberal Democrats article (or for that matter the LibDem Wiki available through the LibDemVoice website) but for recording purposes, I honestly recommend using the same colour for the Scottish branch of the party doktorb _words^deeds 18:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The Scottish party colour is only used on pages for elections to the Scottish Parliament the colour is never going to appear on the same page as the UK party one so i fail to see who the colour comparison comes into the equation all im saying is its silly to use a colour to represent the Scottish libs that they don't even use. --Barryob (Contribs) (Talk) 19:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Your reply implies the Scottish Liberal Democrats do not stand in Scottish seats for the Westminster Parliament. To avoid having different colours for what is, let us not forget, the same party, I advise with all respect that the colour for the Liberal Democrats, be they English or otherwise, be left as its current choice. I respect your opinion, of course, not least because we belong to the same party, but I believe on this you are trying to create a false impression. doktorb _words^deeds 20:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying that lib dems MPs in Scotland answer to Nicol Stephen and not Nick Clegg the lib dem website says otherwise [2], the point I was making that for UK Parliament constituencies in Scotland the party listed is the UK lib dems the Scottish party is only linked on Scottish Parliament constituencies because there is a difference between then on policies ect. --Barryob (Contribs) (Talk) 20:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 735 of the articles assigned to this project, or 36.3%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subsribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Splitting constituencies for UK/GB Parliaments

I thought I'd raise this issue here after a discussion with UpDown (talk · contribs). He recently spun off Aberdeen Burghs (British Parliament constituency) from Aberdeen Burghs (UK Parliament constituency). Historically, AFAIK, we've lumped together unchanged English/British/UK constituencies into a single article. UpDown has made some cogent arguments for splitting the articles on his talk page, and there's arguably some precedent already. (I think Gary J spun off a separate article to list medieval knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire, and we have separate pages on Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) constituencies.) Nonetheless, I thought it worth mentioning here for comment, since this project has traditionally handled pre-1801 English and Scottish constituencies. Choess (talk) 03:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Choess for starting this. As I said on my talk page, having seperate articles is far clearer and creates a larger distinction between the UK and the Kingdom of Great Britain, which are two different countries, with different Parliaments (and indeed the Parliaments of England or Scotland prior to 1707). Putting such constituencies on the same page is, I believe, misleading, especially when the article title includes "(UK Parliament constituency)". Having seperate articles makes it quite clear they were seperate Parliaments for seperate countries. Having seperate pages also helps in terms of size, take the Portsmouth (UK Parliament constituency) article for example; this is very long and would look far, and be easier to read, better as three articles, for the English, GB and UK Parliaments.--UpDown (talk) 07:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

But it's perhaps implying more change brought about by the Union than there actually were. In practice the existing English/British Parliament was augmented by new seats for the further extent of its jurisdiction but the existing seats didn't change and nor did the representation or political control. It could be rather an artificial imposition on an organic structure. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:45, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Timrollpickering. From the English point of view, there was little change. The constituencies were the same before and after both 1707 and 1801. What happened in each case was that additional members arrived at Westminster, in the first case from Scotland and in the second case from Ireland. It would make a lot of sense to have separate Scottish articles for before and after 1707 and separate Irish ones for before and after 1801, sicne the elections were to a different Parliament, meeting in a different place. However for England there is no need for multiple articles. It is true that we have separate categories for the members of each, but English MPs were frequently reelected for exactly the same seats as the post-Union election, so that the distinction is artificial. On the other hand, the inclusion of election results is making some of the articles rather long. If it is desired to have shorter articles, we might fork off the election results. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I can see where you are both coming from, but I don't believe that it is actual a problem. All we are stating is that they are constituencies for different Parliaments. As long as the articles makes it clear that the constituency existed in the previous Parliament, then I don't believe there is any problem or confusion. Another consideration is the article length, and the most logical way is to split for English/British/GB. But my main concern is that each Parliament should have its own constituency articles, we currently give the impression its always been the UK Parliament and I think we need to make it clearer.--UpDown (talk) 07:20, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

• But from the English point of view it was not a different Parliament. It was the same Parliament with the same traditions, building, procedure, etc. It had merely absorbed more members. If we need to split articles on English or Scottish constituencies, it would be much more appropriate to make the split at 1832, when the Great Reform Act resulted in a very substantial change in the constituencies, with the abolition of Rotten Boroughs, the reduction of other boroughs to a single member, and the division of some counties into two constituencies. The member lists often already have a break at this point, due to those changes. Portsmouth (UK Parliament constituency) does not have such a break but many do; indeed for counties that were divided, the article automatically ends at 1832. Another natural break would be the period of Charles I's personal rule, when there was no Parliament. I do not know whether the previous Parliament was prorogued or dissolved, but the question is merely academic. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
• Perhaps what is more to the point, although the Parliaments changed, the constituencies themselves were the same - not just in the sense that they were similar and had the same names, but they were continuous entities. In the case of the English boroughs, for example, each had their own unique franchises which were continued through 1707 and 1800, and disputes in the later period were settled with reference to the precedents regardless of whether they had been set before or after the Union(s) of the Parliaments. So even if a given constituency has elected MPs to three different parliaments, it is the same constituency and should be covered in a single article. Besides, if they are split it will not only add about 800 pages but every link to those pages will have to be adjusted (by hand!) to point to the right one of the three pages. Rather you than me! Rgmmortimore (talk) 19:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I stand by the view that 1832 is the appropraiate date for a split (if we must have one at all). Various counties were divided into two or more divisions; rotten boroughs were abolished or had their franchise changed. The abolition of many constituencies measn that many already have that termination date. If we do have splits, the present names could be retained as disambiguation pages. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:26, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Formatting of results

I've also been involved in a discussion with User:UpDown regarding some changes the user made to Haltemprice and Howden (UK Parliament constituency). The first change was reversing the chronology of results. I recall that when we discussed the order to use for results previously we didn't really reach a conclusion; is there any reason now that we should opt for one or the other? Secondly, he shortened the section titles from "Election results" and "Elections in the 19xxs" to "Elections" and "19xxs". I'm not keen on "Elections", as it suggests that the section includes all aspects of the elections, not just a list of results, but I note that the shorter form is suggested by our style guide. Do other editors have any views on how best to standardise? Warofdreams talk 01:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that far more readers of any constituency article will want the most recent election result than any other, so it must come first. It's then logical to have the rest in reverse chronological sequence, so that adjacent elections stay adjacent. "Election results" is a more appropriate title, as that's what's in the section - any discussion of particular elections would tend to be under "history". I'm neutral on whether the subsections are "Elections in the 19xxs" or just "19xxs", though perhaps tend slightly to the longer version - on some pages you'll be a long way from the main subject heading by the time you're scrolling through the subsections. PamD (talk) 07:48, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

For info: previous discussion (Jan 2007) is in the archives here PamD (talk) 08:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I'm working very slowly through various historic constituencies adding (among other things) results. An example would be Hackney North (UK Parliament constituency). Now I adopted the "oldest at the top, newest at the bottom" chronology as it made sense in the way my mind is ordered, and is the same order as the list of MPs. But I notice that there was quite a debate, and I'm not sure that a consensus was reached... bear in mind I'm only talking about defunct seats. Am I going about this the right way (literally), or not? Lozleader (talk) 14:30, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we have ever agreed a concensus on this issue Lozleader. I think most people favour the active seats leading with the most recent and the historic seats leading with the oldest first. That said there are dissenting views for both ordering. So by all means carry on with your own chronology and one day we will maybe agree a concensus. - Galloglass 16:02, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Tayside North (UK Parliament constituency)

I'm fairly sure this should be at North Tayside (UK Parliament constituency) instead, according to official sources - I've started a discussion at Talk:Tayside North (UK Parliament constituency). Hugs — sjorford++ 16:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The BBC has it listed as Tayside North in 2001, while Ask Aristotle at The Guardian has it listed as Tayside North in 1992 and North Tayside in 1997. Assuming that Ask Aristotle is correct on the date that the name changed you have three elections under the name Tayside North (1983, 1987 & 1992) against two elections under the name North Tayside (1997 & 2001). The constituency was abolished at the 2005 election so there is no current name to consider. As one name redirects to the other and both appear correct I see little need for a rename. Regards. Road Wizard (talk) 17:36, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The necessay legal answer is here It is the county constituency of North Tayside. Hope this helps doktorb _words^deeds 18:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The BBC, or perhaps the list they use as source, has an annoying tendency to put all the geographic locators after the place name, regardless of whether or not this is the actual order. This can create absurd names like "Sussex Mid" and strange ones where the local council has the name the other way round eg. Down North/North Down. But it's best to put it at the correct name not perpetuate media inaccuracies. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation...again

Hroðulf (talk · contribs) has taken upon him/herself to move what appears to be a random selection of constituency articles, removing "(UK Parliament constituency)" from the title, citing WP:DAB. This has been discussed before (see here) and there was a pretty clear consensus (with one objector) that the disambiguator should be used uniformly in all cases. Should we move these ones back again? --RFBailey (talk) 15:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes by all means move them back. The consensus was pretty clear when this was discussed and any other solution creates chaos in too many linked articles. - Galloglass 17:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh good heavens in the name of all that is holy. Yeah, we've been here before and the view then was to keep them with (UK Parliament Constituency). I urge this arbitary decision to be reversed doktorb _words^deeds 17:26, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Right, I've moved them back again. Let's hope that's the end of the matter..... --RFBailey (talk) 21:21, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that discussion: I stumbled on them when I typed unambiguous constituency names, and got redlinks. The discussion happened two years ago, yet WP:DAB has not been changed, so I would encourage you to get that done if you don't want other self-appointed disambiguation experts (like me) moving articles. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 22:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

If there's a constituency article page with a disambiguator then there should always be a redirect from the undisambiguated version, or a hatnote from the page if it exists, or a link from a dab page, so Hrodulf shouldn't have been finding redlinks for existing constituency pages. I went through the Yorkshire current constituencies a while back and fixed this (or I seem to remember doing so), and ditto for Euroconstituencies (with one or two arguments where the constit name was the country name and people felt the hatnote inappropriate). Perhaps someone needs to use a bot (or sophisticated AWB usage?) to find and fix the instances where Foo (UK Parliament Constituency) exists and doesn't yet have (a) a redirect from Foo (like Leeds North West), or (b) a link (hatnote) from the page at Foo (like Colne Valley, or (c) a link from Foo (disambiguation) (Sutton and Cheam or Pudsey (disambiguation)). PamD (talk) 22:54, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The current style is a bit of a mouthful, but typing "Foo (U" in the search box will usually identify the article. I certainly would not like to see this changed. Red links do sometimes come up, but that is where some one has omitted (or misspelt) a word. I corrected one of these today. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:07, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Ministerial by-elections

I'm trying to find if Wikipedia has any page on the old law that required newly appointed ministers in the Commons to refight their constituencies. Does anyone know if there's an article anywhere? Timrollpickering (talk) 10:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I have not found such an article. The Re-election of Ministers Act 1919 (c. 2, 9 & 10 Geo. V) and the Re-election of Ministers Act (1919) Amendment Act 1926 (c. 19, 16 & 17 Geo. V), do not have blue links at the moment. As you are no doubt aware the 1919 Act reduced the circumstances in which a ministerial by-election was required and the 1926 Act abolished the requirement.

It may also be the case that similar rules, about ministers needing to be re-elected after appointment, existed in some Commonwealth countries at one time. --Gary J (talk) 13:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It definitely existed in Canada until 1938 and brought down the government in 1926 - see King-Byng Affair and Arthur Meighen for where it brought down a new government. According to both Western Australian state election, 1901 and Alf Morgans it also existed in at least that state until 1947.

Given the number of times it threw up interesting political consequences (e.g. as well as Canada above it broke the deadlock in Western Australia in 1901 and in the UK Churchill lost his seat when he first entered the Cabinet) it would be useful to have an article on this somewhere, if anyone knows enough of the details. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The Resignation from the British House of Commons article touches on the issue in places, but I am not aware of an article that goes into the subject in any significant depth. Road Wizard (talk) 17:26, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I do not know of such an article. The principle was that an MP, who accepted an office of profit under the crown thereby lost his seat, and had to be reelected. I do not know from what date that applied. However, it would make an interesting article. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

From the article I linked to above; the rule was introduced in 1623, amended in 1919 and withdrawn entirely in 1926. Road Wizard (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

You've slightly misconstrued the article. Since 1623, it has been accepted that MPs cannot resign ad libitum (although the various Stewardships give them this power in practice through a legal fiction). The law compelling MPs to resign upon accepting an "office of profit under the Crown" was the Place Act, first enacted 1707 (a modified form was in place from 1701 to 1705), and subsequently several times amended. (By contrast, a similar provision was not enacted in the Irish Parliament until 1793.) The terms of the Place Act could be somewhat murky. To give an example, when Thomas Stanwix, MP for Carlisle, was appointed Governor of Kingston-upon-Hull in 1721, it was unclear whether this was a military office (exempt from the Act) or a civil office, which would trigger a by-election. The question was placed before the House, which voted that it was not a military office. (Stanwix lost the by-election.) Choess (talk) 02:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional information, but I haven't misconstrued the article. The additional information you have provided was not included in the article and there is certainly no discussion of the Place Act 1707. The error appears to be one of omission by the authors of the article and not an error on my part of misinterpreting the text. ^_~

Do you want to add the additional information to the article? Road Wizard (talk) 06:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

SOFIXEDIT. Choess (talk) 20:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I would have done it myself, but I don't have access to any sources that support your statements. Road Wizard (talk) 20:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC)