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IT IS IRONIC that large numbers of Labour MPs are earnestly discussing constitutional change in the midst of the most profound economic crisis any of us can remember. This is the party, let us not forget, that here in Wales constantly berated its Plaid opponents for obsessing about the constitution at the expense of the issues that really mattered to voters. Nowadays, they’d much rather talk about proportional representation than unemployment.

Nonetheless, it is the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who has won the headlines for his proposed package of constitutional re-plumbing. Eschewing PR, the Tory leader says he wants to cut the number of MPs “initially by 10%” and ensure that there is parity in the size of constituencies in each of the UK’s nations. It is a proposal almost purpose-designed to gain approving grunts from key swing voters in key marginal seats – the fabled 50,000 or so voters upon whom each election depends. At a time when voter disgust at MPs’ expenses is at its highest, a package of enforced redundancies is bound to hit the sweet spot. The fact that it contains an extra measure to curb the supposed representational perks for the Celtic nations is merely an added bonus for those English marginals.

There are legitimate questions about how the proposal is supposed to achieve Mr Cameron’s other aims of a feistier legislature and weaker executive. Fewer MPs means larger constituencies and hence more casework. It means that those who remain will be spread more thinly in carrying out their scrutiny function. If the diagnosis is that Parliament has failed to keep the Government on its toes, it is hard to see how fewer and more overworked MPs can improve on the job in hand.

And while the move may be populist, it remains to be seen whether it will be popular. The number of MPs will increase to 650 at the next election. If Mr Cameron has his way it will then fall to 585. That means that each constituency will contain a shade under 77,000 electors. For Wales’s nearly 2.3 million voters that means 29 or 30 MPs to do the job of the present 40 representatives.

Under existing rules this is not as simple as merely making each seat bigger. Currently the Boundary Commission has to try and ensure that constituency boundaries do not cross the old “preserved” counties (such as those in place before 1994, like Clwyd and South Glamorgan). However, given that the current legislation stipulates that Wales should not have fewer than 35 MPs, this arcane stricture may well face the chop.

But even that does not make matters straightforward. We can safely assume that no constituency will be allowed to be cross-border, so it will be a question of dividing 2.3 million into 30 in a way that neither advantages any particular party, nor fails the less objective test of being “unnatural” – joining together communities that otherwise have no obvious or functional affinity.

This is not easy. An obvious saving would involve merging the four Cardiff seats into three, but this would result in excessively large seats of around 90,000 each. Even removing Penarth from Cardiff South would not do the trick. So the next tactic might be to stick with four seats, enlarging Cardiff Central to the south, west and North and then enlarging the others by adding parts of adjacent seats. Then, all of a sudden, we have three city seats that reach into and beyond the thin rural belt that divides the metropolitan Cardiff from the Valleys to the north, the Vale to the west and Newport to the east.

The problem becomes even more acute in rural areas, where sparsity has made the creation of normal sized seats very tricky. Who here wants to be the one to tell Ynys Mon, with its 51,000 voters, that they will shortly be joined by around half of the neighbouring Arfon seat in order to get to the requisite 77,000 constituents? Which quarter of the two Powys seat’s 102,000 electors will volunteer to be incorporated into Ceredigion, the Valleys or Clywd in order to keep things neat and tidy?

These are not insurmountable difficulties; they have been the Boundary Commission’s stock-in-trade for years. That is not the point. The point is that if the objective is to make people feel more connected to and in control of their politicians, then creating large amorphous constituencies with little sense of locality is probably not an ideal way to go about it. Even more pertinently, people will dislike it intensely.

No doubt the answer will be to tweak things here and there so the sort of anomalous outcomes above are avoided. But if we are to keep to Cameron’s proposals for inter-nation parity that means only that some seats will end up much larger than others. That will not an end the “unfair distortions” of which Mr Cameron complains – it is an intensification.

If we kicked off with the irony of Labour MPs taking refuge from the real issues in constitutional reform, then we end in the equally rich example of a Conservative leader who pledges to push power radically downwards and outwards via central diktat, and who calls for localism by seeking to make things less local. If what you want is an even weaker legislature with an even feebler link to the voters then cut away. If not, then reconsider.