First we had “Vote Clegg, get Brown” from the Conservatives. Now we have the mirror-image message from Peter Mandelson:
“You might start flirting with Nick Clegg, but that way you will end up marrying David Cameron,” he told the Sunday Mirror.
People have got to remember the biggest number of seats that could change hands are between Tory and Labour. If they vote Lib Dem, they are making it easier for the Tories to get in.
Now, naturally, these formulas are absurd, but they are necessary — and Mandelson is right to warn voters about Labour-Tory marginals — because of our unfair first-past-the-post voting system.
It is a system that is now supported, of the three main leaders, only by David Cameron, who reiterated his preference for the status quo today. Nick Clegg, who is seeking to brand Gordon Brown “irrelevant”, would do well to think hard about that fact.
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