As I promised, this week I am unveiling the definitive guide to where Tribune readers should vote Liberal Democrat at the general election. This year, the electorate of Britain has an unprecedented chance to consign the Conservative Party to the dustbin of history — or at least to a poor third place in terms of seats in the House of Commons. The Tories are in an unprecedented mess, and are there for the taking. But it won’t happen if anti-Tory electors don’t vote tactically for the candidate best placed to beat the Tory throughout the land.
Where Labour or the Liberal Democrats (or Plaid Cymru or the SNP in Wales and Scotland) hold a seat, that means voting for the incumbent party. If you are a Lib Dem supporter in one of the 417 seats held by Labour, you should vote Labour. And if you are a Labour supporter in one of the 47 seats held by the Lib Dems, you should vote Lib Dem. Incidentally, Labour is in second place in only five of these, not one of them among its top 25 targets.
But it’s just as important to vote tactically against the Tories in Tory-held seats. In the 90 constituencies where a Labour candidate came second to a Tory at the last general election or more recent by-election, you should vote Labour — and persuade supporters of other parties to do likewise. But in the 72 constituencies where a Lib Dem came second to a Tory, you should vote Lib Dem. That means that you should vote for the Liberal Democrats in the following constituencies. In each, the Lib Dem candidate in the last election held there was second to a Tory. To spell it out, a Labour vote is a wasted vote in:
Aldershot
Arundel and South Downs
Aylesbury
Beaconsfield
Bexhill and Battle
Bournemouth East
Bournemouth West
Brentwood and Ongar
Bridgwater
Cambridgeshire South
Cheadle
Chelmsford West
Chesham and Amersham
Chichester
Christchurch
Congleton
Cotswold
Devizes
Devon East
Dorset Mid and Poole North
Dorset North
Dorset West
Eastbourne
Folkestone and Hythe
Guildford
Haltemprice and Howden
Hampshire East
Hampshire North East
Hampshire North West
Harborough
Henley
Horsham
Leominster
Ludlow
Maidenhead
Mole Valley
New Forest East
New Forest West
Norfolk North
Norfolk South
Orpington
Penrith and The Border
Poole
Ribble Valley
Ryedale
Saffron Walden
Salisbury
Skipton and Ripon
Solihull
Southend West
Stratford-on-Avon
Surrey East
Surrey Heath
Surrey South West
Sussex Mid
Teignbridge
Tewkesbury
Tiverton and Honiton
Totnes
Tunbridge Wells
Wealden
Wells
Westbury
Westmorland and Lonsdale
Wiltshire North
Windsor
Woking
Wokingham
Woodspring
Worcestershire West
Worthing East and Shoreham
Worthing West
Note that Buckingham, where Tribune’s editor Mark Seddon is standing for Labour, is not on the list – but that’s not because I’ve cheated so he doesn’t give me the sack. Although the seat hardly counts as a marginal, Comrade Seddon is the best-placed candidate to overturn the Tory, so stands to benefit from tactical anti-Tory voting.
Oh – and I’m sending this article to Lib Dem headquarters inviting candidates to reproduce any part of it in their election campaign materials if they wish. If you notice, I’ve written it carefully so that they can unscrupulously lift quotes to suggest that Tribune, the Labour Party paper, endorsed each one of them individually.
