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Conservatives set new goals in tight election
Estelle Shirbon
LONDON
Mon Apr 26, 2010 11:07am EDT
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Analysts' view: UK faces parliament with no party in charge
9:20am EDT
Workers erect an opposition Conservative Party election poster showing party leader David Cameron in Manchester, April 26, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Phil Noble
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's opposition Conservatives launched a new drive Monday to dislodge the ruling Labor Party from some of its strongholds in a May 6 election that has been thrown wide open.
World
The center-right Conservatives are battling to oust center-left Labor from government after 13 years. Both parties face a surprise challenge from the centrist Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems, whose popularity has surged in the last 10 days.
The Conservatives are ahead in the polls, but the Lib Dem bounce to second place could deprive them of the overall majority of parliamentary seats that they need to govern alone.
The polls are pointing to a "hung parliament" in which no party has an overall majority of the 650 seats. The Conservative nightmare is that this could allow Labor to cling to power by forming an alliance with the Lib Dems.
Conservative leader David Cameron said his party had added 20 new names to the list of target seats it hopes to win from Labor, suggesting this could tip the balance and deliver a Conservative majority.
"What we've seen because of the meltdown in the Labor campaign is an opportunity to work even harder in certain seats which were ... quite safe Labor seats but they are not any more," he told a news conference. "They are up for grabs. We are aiming for a majority government. That is why we've extended our battleground."
Cameron denied suggestions that this meant that the Conservatives were now pessimistic about winning target seats held by the Lib Dems.
"We are working very, very hard to win seats off the Liberal Democrats in many parts of the country," he said, attacking that party as "misguided," "confused" and "out with the fairies."
Labour's election co-coordinator Douglas Alexander dismissed Cameron's claims as "Conservative spin" and said there was little evidence the Lib Dems had won over Labor voters.
"We are picking up very little direct transference of Labor support for the Liberal Democrats in either our marginal seats or across the country," he told a news conference. "There is however a significant level of undecided voters."
Under Britain's electoral system, victory hinges not on the breakdown of the national vote but the number of parliamentary seats won by each party. Parties usually target marginal seats which can change hands with only a small swing in votes.
Cameron says a hung parliament would usher in a period of instability, with parties wrangling over political posts and pet policies rather than tackling Britain's record budget deficit.
His concerns are widely shared by businesses, according to a survey from the British Chambers of Commerce released Monday that found two thirds of them were worried about the potential impact of a hung parliament.
The Conservatives are on course to have 289 lawmakers in the 650-seat parliament, with Labor on 234 and the Lib Dems on 94, according to a projection from the Politics Home website that was based on all previous opinion polls.
Swiss Bank UBS said in a research note Monday that a coalition government would likely agree measures to tighten fiscal policy, and the biggest impact on sterling would come if a single party won a majority and tried to cut the budget deficit too quickly.
For the Lib Dems, who say the voting system is biased against them and favors the two bigger parties, a hung parliament could offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance to obtain electoral reform in return for their support in parliament.
Labour's Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a referendum on changing the voting system, signaling that he would be open to negotiations with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.
Cameron, hoping he will not need Clegg's support to govern, has rejected electoral reform.
World
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