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Here's how many seats the Tories could gain thanks to boundary changes at the next election

Here's how many seats the Tories could gain thanks to boundary changes at the next election

A political and electoral analyst has projected that Labour will lose 24 seats, while the Conservatives will lose just 14, through changes to constituency boundaries set to be announced in September.

In analysis published in the Times, Lewis Baston made predictions as to how the new boundary map, which reduces the number of constituencies from 650 to 600, would appear, using newly released data from the Office for National Statistics.

England is set to lose 32 seats in total, Wales is set to lose 11 and Scotland is set to lose 6, resulting in a new Conservative majority of 33 seats (up from 17).

Baston predicts that Labour stand to lose the most seats, with notable MPs such as Liz Kendall, Chris Leslie, Frank Field and Tristram Hunt set to compete for seats, while on the Tory side Priti Patel, Bernard Jenkin and John Whittingdale seem likely to compete for two seats between themselves.

As the Independent's Whitehall correspondent Charlie Cooper pointed out:

The Government claims that the falling size of the electorate is caused by a reduction in ‘ghost’ voters, who are incorrectly registered at an address, have died, or never existed in the first place.

But Gloria de Piero, Labour’s shadow minister for voter registration, said the Government was 'shamelessly taking an opportunity to redraw constituency boundaries based on an electorate that is far lower than it should be'.

Read Baston's full report here

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