[n4r9]

I know this conversation has gone slightly stale but I've reread that John Rentoul piece a couple of times, and it's very wishy washy but as far as I can make out his argument is this:

1. The Conservative party has proposed some new boundaries.

2. The new boundaries would have given the Conservatives 15 extra seats, according to the 2017 vote share.

3. The current boundaries are very out of date.

4. The new boundaries follow stricter rules about constituency size variation.

5. The new boundaries lead to a reduced number of MPs.

6. 3-5 imply that the new boundaries are fairer than current boundaries.

7. 2 and 6 imply that the current boundaries are biased 15 seats towards Labour.

The hole is in statement 6; points 3 and 5 are irrelevant to the question of fairness and point 4 is weak as there are plenty of ways to gerrymander the boundaries whilst equalising constituency size. What's "utterly bizarre" is that Rentoul expects many people to swallow such a flawed argument.