I suspect the boundary commission will be sympathetic to special cases. The Isle of Wight is another one where geography defines the constituency. The real importance is in evening out the majority of urban and country constituencies, so that Labour no longer has its in-built advantage at the expense of all the other parties.

Oh, and the Tories wanted to reduce the number of MPs (to about 550 I think). I couldn't see anything about that in the coalition document, so I suppose it is still an aim, although with Nick Clegg in charge of political reform, I don't know where that fits into his priorities.