The first solid evidence of possible "tactical voting" pacts by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters to keep out the Tories has emerged just three days into the British general election.
Twenty-two Labour and Green Party activists in the Lewes constituency in East Sussex have called on voters to back the sitting Liberal Democrat MP, Mr Norman Baker, against a strong Conservative challenge. Mr Baker is defending a majority of just 1,300. Long-time Labour party member Ms Liz Mandeville risked expulsion from the party yesterday when she told the BBC that Labour's candidate, Mr Paul Richards, could not win, and that exercising the vote should be "incremental" rather than "sacrificial".
Mr Simon Anderson of the local Green Party justified the move on the grounds of Mr Baker's strong focus on a number of key environmental issues.
The action also won support from the prominent Labour MP for Rotherham, Mr Denis Macshane. He described Mr William Hague's Tories as "the most extreme" of the right-wing parties in Europe and the United States, and said they "require defeat".
In the context of this election Mr Macshane said the question was "how you get the Tories to be sensible and get rid of the extremists". He compared the position of the Conservative Party under Mr Hague to that of the Labour Party in the early 1980s. Electoral annihilation had cleared the way for the Blair leadership, and he said parliament would "only come to life" if there was a centre-based opposition.
"The only message we can give the Conservative Party so they come back to the centre ground is a defeat. So all the anti-extremist votes ought to go to the candidates that can send that message to the Tories," he said.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, has already claimed his party could supplant the Conservatives to become the official opposition at Westminster.