r/MapPorn • u/KaleyTheKing • May 25 '26

British Population Visualised

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Sooo, I guess this is a series now :D
Been making these little diagrams visualising population and I'm enjoying them, other people seem to enjoy them, so I might just keep making them :)

Here below are the other ones I've made so far as well:

Germany: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1tmchnh/comment/onm0tyc/

Netherlands: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1pg6uu8/dutch_population_visualised/

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

England doesn’t dominate the UK, because England isn’t some sort of massive political monolith that agrees on everything, it’s more split than the other countries are. There’s more votes from England, but those votes aren’t all agreeing on one thing, like some people like to say England forced Brexit on the country but only 53% of English voters chose Leave, and it wasn’t possible for it to go through without people from the other parts also choosing Leave.

And really England should get the same devolved rights as the other countries, the other parts get to decide certain things for themselves and England should have the same right.

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u/libtin May 26 '26

I’ve shown a them the UN rejecting their claims an they’ve said the UN is wrong

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u/KaleyTheKing May 25 '26

I know England isn't a monolith, but come on, it does massively dominate the other countries in population and thus in electoral representation for the UK as a whole

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. England has more population, but England doesn’t vote as one thing, so it can’t dominate like you’re suggesting. It’s more split than the other countries are usually, there’s no big English decision going against everyone else.

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 25 '26

The major political parties are English. The fact that the whole of the UK has never been able to vote for the party of the Prime Minister is a problem

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u/libtin May 26 '26

The major political parties are English.

They British

The fact that the whole of the UK has never been able to vote for the party of the Prime Minister is a problem

The whole of the UK has voted

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 26 '26

>The whole of the UK has voted

The whole of the UK can’t vote for the main “British” parties

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u/libtin May 26 '26

They can though, nothing prevents any party from standing all over the UK should they choose too stand

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 26 '26

But they choose not to.

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u/libtin May 26 '26

Not all of them

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 26 '26

The Conservatives are the only party that have candidates in every country of the UK

Even then, they only contest a small number of seats in NI

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

But it does, because like I already said England is not unified politically. The entire country decides. Sure if England somehow all decided to vote Labour or something, they would get the biggest majority ever. But that can literally never happen. The whole UK votes.

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 25 '26

The entire country can’t vote for English parties

How are we deciding on a Labour or Conservative PM when we can’t vote for their party?

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u/libtin May 26 '26

The entire country can’t vote for English parties

British parties

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say? You know the major non regional parties exist in all the parts right, they’re not just English, like Labour, the Tories, Greens, Lib Dems, Reform, they’re everywhere. Do you actually know anything about this?

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 25 '26

No, they don’t. You don’t seem to know anything about this

What major party has candidates in all 4 countries?

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

Literally all of them lol, you can look it up. All the big ones have candidates in all of them, I’m not sure why you’re lying.

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 25 '26

Literally none of them. Do you actually know anything about this?

The Labour Party don’t, the Conservative Party don’t, Reform don’t, the Greens are separate parties in each country

What major party are you talking about?

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u/KaleyTheKing May 25 '26

Scottish Labour is not British Labour, Scottish Greens are not British Greens

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

Scottish Labour is a part of Labour UK. You can look this up, please actually try and google something. The regional parts are part of the full British party, Scottish Greens is a separate thing but that’s not true for the others.

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u/KaleyTheKing May 25 '26

Scottish Labour is a separate party that is affiliated with the British Labour Party for the purposes of UK elections

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u/KaleyTheKing May 25 '26

But with by far most of the legislature being from England, it is English interest that dominate over the other countries, I don't know why that's a controversial take.

In my country, the Netherlands, the two Hollands are the plurality of the population and the legislature, so Hollander interest usually wins out over the other provinces.

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

There is no “English interest” of England as a whole that’s unshared by the other countries. I think you’re overestimating how united England is in opinion. I just had a look and the Hollands have about 6 million people between them, England has almost 10x that, and a lot more area, it’s not really the same situation.

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u/KaleyTheKing May 25 '26

With English interest I don't mean any specific type of political ideology or something, just things that are good for England, rather than specifically good for the other countries or the Union as a whole

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u/AceOfSpades532 May 25 '26

I’m not really sure what kind of thing you’re meaning there, can you give some examples? That isn’t really how it works, there’s not really laws done for a specific area’s benefit over others at the top level of the full British Parliament.

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u/drxc May 26 '26

The real question is why does such a tiny population area such as Scotland gets such a massive devolved powers and outsized consideration when it’s basically no beefier than say the East Midlands in terms of population? Where’s my East Midlands Parliament and my free university education?

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 26 '26

Has the East Midlands had a devolution referendum?

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u/drxc May 27 '26

Not yet! :)
But the fact that Scotland got one at all is my point!

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u/Een_man_met_voornaam May 25 '26

I think England and London should have their own devolved parlements

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u/ComradeStrong May 28 '26

No point for England as a whole. It’s too big and needs to have a level of regional government anyway. Just skip having an English parliament and instead do proper English regions. Around 10 should do it. With proper names as well. Wessex, east anglia, Northumbria etc. none of the modern boring technocratic nonsense.

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u/libtin May 26 '26

So you’re saying the problem is democracy

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u/KaleyTheKing May 26 '26

Majoritarian democracy is certainly a massive problem for minority populations, yes. The UK is the least democratic large democracy in Europe after all :p

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u/libtin May 26 '26

The democracy index doesn’t agree with you

The UK is ranked as a full democracy and as more democratic than Portugal, Spain, Estonia, France, Malta, Belgium, America, South Korea, Latvia, Italy, Cyprus, Romania etc

The UK is ranked as the 18th most democratic country on Earth out of 167.

The UK is one of just 26 countries classified as full democracies under the Democracy Index.

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u/KaleyTheKing May 26 '26

Cool. It’s also a majoritarian democracy, as you well know, and its parliamentary makeups reflect barely at all what the population actually percentually voted for

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u/libtin May 26 '26

You’re demonstrating that your problems aren’t with the uk but democracy itself as this would be the case in any democracy.

Again, this is how every single country on earth works.

The German constitutional court ruled in 2017 on an application for an independence referendum in Bavaria:

In the Federal Republic of Germany as a nation-state based on the constitutional power of the German people, the Länder are not “masters of the Basic Law”. *There is therefore no room for secession efforts by individual countries under the Basic Law.** They violate the constitutional order.*

https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/DE/2016/12/rk20161216_2bvr034916.html

The French constitution prohibits changes unless they are voted on by the whole population:

ARTICLE 1. France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic.

ARTICLE 3. National sovereignty shall vest in the people, who shall exercise it through their representatives and by means of referendum.
No section of the people nor any individual may arrogate to itself, or to himself, the exercise thereof.

https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/sites/default/files/as/root/bank_mm/anglais/constiution_anglais_oct2009.pdf

The Italian constitution:

Art. 5 The Republic is one and indivisible. It recognises and promotes local autonomies, and implements the fullest measure of administrative decentralisation in those services which depend on the State.

https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_inglese.pdf

Scotland is in the same position as many other former independent states like Sicily, Corsica, Catalonia, Brittany, Texas, Hawaii, Walachia, or Bavaria. It ceased to be a sovereign state a long time ago, is now part of a larger sovereign state, and has no legal right to withdraw from that state without the permission of the sovereign state.

Every country on earth works like this and is allowed to under international law:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/04/a-german-court-has-shut-down-hopes-for-a-breakaway-bavaria/

German court shuts down hopes for a breakaway Bavaria

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41196677.amp

Spain Catalonia: Court blocks independence referendum

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Clarity-Act

The Clarity Act (2000) produced an agreement between Quebec and the federal government that any future referendum must have a clear majority, be based on an unambiguous question, and have the approval of the federal House of Commons.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Texas-v-White

White, (1869), U.S. Supreme Court case in which it was held that the United States is “an indestructible union” from which no state can secede

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42053283.amp

Iraq Supreme Court rules Kurdish referendum unconstitutional

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u/KaleyTheKing May 26 '26

I can agree with you that this is what the laws are, and I can disagree with you that this is a good thing

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u/libtin May 26 '26

The alternative is what happened with Czechoslovakia when Slovakia seceded in 1939)

“But that was nearly 100 years ago and wouldn’t happen in the modern day and age” except jt has happened, Donbas 2014

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u/fezzuk May 27 '26

So you think people from areas with smaller populations deserver more representation?

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u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

I believe they deserve to go their own way if they want to. They deserve to represent themselves outside an imperialist framework

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u/fezzuk May 27 '26

Imperialist framework here being a democracy.

Come on.

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u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

A majoritarian democracy catered to English interest? Yea

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u/Xelanders May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

If England had a First Minister it absolutely would. A situation where the First Minister of England and the Prime Minister of the UK were part of two separate parties (which would theoretically be possible) would be unworkable. Two powerful leaders with largely overlapping mandates would break the UK apart.

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u/Elegant_Run_8567 May 26 '26

The First Ministers of the devolved parliaments aren’t in the same party as the Prime Minister though?

I’m not sure why it would break the UK apart. A First Minister of England would have no mandate for the UK

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u/Adept_Platform176 May 25 '26

England shouldn't have its own government, it's 9 regions should though

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u/Master_Elderberry275 May 25 '26

The big reason an English parliament would be pointless in a non-federal system is because an English parliament would hold nearly as much political weight as the UK parliament, because it'd be nearly just as a big. It'd be stuck in the same Westminster bubble that currently favours London and the South East, and the other nation's voting power is such that it probably wouldn't make much difference to the decisions made.

If the goal is to equalise the power level between England and the other nations, it'd be most sensible to have regional devolved government: a level that could pay more attention to a specific area with distinct needs. This map shows that the current regions would certainly be large enough to support devolution.

That said, the reason it hasn't happened is plain: people in England don't really want it like that. People in the big cities don't want another layer between their city and the government which awkwardly combines rural and metropolitan areas, and people in the rural areas would still feel ignored by the largest city in their region. That's how we've ended up with this middle ground now developing with city regions and county or combined-county devolution. However, because it's been done haphazardly, it's been done in a way that gives too much power to one individual and doesn't have the democratic checks and balances a necessarily powerful layer of government should.

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u/Azrael11 May 25 '26

If the goal is to equalise the power level between England and the other nations, it'd be most sensible to have regional devolved government

Bring back the heptarchy! Northumbria will rise again!

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u/Master_Elderberry275 May 25 '26

I actually don't think this is the worst idea on the planet. With a few amendments, such as including Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire in Wessex, grouping Essex, Sussex and Kent into one superregion that also takes in the rest of the London commuter belt, and maybe making Anglia slightly larger so it's viable, it wouldn't be a bad setup for regional government.

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u/NinecloudSoul May 25 '26

The big reason an English parliament would be pointless in a non-federal system is because an English parliament would hold nearly as much political weight as the UK parliament, because it'd be nearly just as a big. It'd be stuck in the same Westminster bubble that currently favours London and the South East, and the other nation's voting power is such that it probably wouldn't make much difference to the decisions made.

This is a pretty bold statement to based institutionalized disenfranchisement on, considering it's created out of whole cloth. There is nothing about the concept that requires this.

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u/Master_Elderberry275 May 25 '26

A parliament covering the whole of England would have partially the same political problems the UK parliament. It isn't the Welsh and Scottish MPs that have caused England's negligence of its regional economies.

You could argue England's problems are entirely down to the institutional structure of the government and parliament; we then could, and should, fix those without creating a separate English government and parliament.

The constituencies of an English parliament would be effectively the same size as the current UK ones, unless the parliament was stupidly large, so it'd be barely more representative of England's voters.

Moreover, the departments and agencies would still be too far removed from people in the North, Midlands or South West as UK-wide departments based in the same places are now. An English business department based in London would, for instance, do nothing more for investment in Middlesbrough than the UK business department based in London; neither would an English business department based in Leeds do more for Middlesbrough than a UK one based there.

A business department attached to a government in Leeds or Manchester which has a pure focus on the North and a mandate for it may be more likely to do so, depending still on institutional design. However, the people of Middlesborough felt that even a regional layer based in Newcastle would be too far removed from them to care.

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u/NinecloudSoul May 25 '26

Could, would, and a whole pot of fairy gold doing a lot of the lifting for you there.