Calls for tactical voting tagged 'desperate'

LABOUR

Calls by senior Labour figures for people to vote tactically against the Conservative Party in the election were condemned as "desperate" by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats yesterday.

Nick Clegg dashed Labour's hopes of an unofficial pact in which both parties would encourage their supporters to vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the Tories.

He told voters: "I want you to vote with your heart, with your best instincts, for the future you want."

Tactical voting moved to the top of the election agenda after Cabinet minister Peter Hain said people should "vote with their head, not their hearts" in 100 Conservative-Labour marginals to keep David Cameron out of Downing St, and hinted that Labour supporters in Liberal Democrat-Tory marginals should also consider voting tactically.

His move was backed by two other Cabinet ministers, Ed Balls and Tessa Jowell, but Labour was accused of being in disarray after refusing to endorse it officially.

Labour's rulebook says members must not advocate supporting a candidate from another party.

Leader Gordon Brown said: "I want every Labour vote because I think people will look at the votes as a whole and they will look at what Labour has achieved."

Douglas Alexander, Labour's campaign co-ordinator, warned that supporting Liberal Democrats could actually let the Tories back into power. "If you vote for the Liberal Democrats you could ... see a Conservative-led government, including Liberal Democrats. We are campaigning for every vote."

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said: "We have Labour candidates standing across the country ... They and we ... believe in the Labour approach and believe this is the best approach to take this country through the recovery."

Asked about constituencies where Labour candidates did not appear to stand a chance, he said: "You never know whether the Labour candidate stands a chance ... The only alternative to a Labour government is a Conservative government."

But Balls was authorised to brief journalists that he understood why Labour supporters in Lib-Dem/Tory marginals might vote tactically. "I'm not going to start second-guessing their judgments. Of course I want the Labour candidate to win but I understand people's concerns about letting the Conservatives in."

Hain, the Welsh Secretary, urged voters to "act intelligently" and said: "My ultimate aim is to get a Parliament which drives through political reform, with Labour in alliance with the Liberal Democrats and others who want to reform the political system from top to bottom."

Jowell said calls for anti-Tory tactical voting were a "good thing" but added: "Ultimately ... people make up their own minds."

In a fighting speech in Manchester, Brown made a passionate plea for a final hearing. He told a rally of more than 300 Labour supporters: "I want to say to those who have yet to decide: listen to what we have to say. When the last 48 hours of this campaign has passed, in that one minute in the polling booth, vote for the kind of country you believe in. And come home to Labour."

Brown aides admitted Cameron and Clegg had "won" on haircuts and style but insisted the Prime Minister had "won" on seriousness, judgment, having a plan for the future and a commitment to the great challenges that only politics could meet. Brown said: "The real X-Factor is putting an X on the ballot paper beside the person who will secure your future".

He suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when a Labour candidate described him as "the worst Prime Minister we have had in this country".

Manish Sood, standing in North West Norfolk, described himself as a "freedom fighter". "All I'm trying to do is bring back the true Labour policies we had under Michael Foot. We have a Prime Minister who is incompetent, who doesn't know what he is talking about, who is not clear on his policies."

The Labour high command disowned him, dismissing him as a "maverick".

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CONSERVATIVE

Senior Tory Kenneth Clarke admitted the Conservatives had only a "slim" chance of securing an overall majority as the party launched a desperate last-minute effort to pass the winning post.

With time running out to capture wavering voters, leader David Cameron campaigned through the night.

Tensions were running high within the Conservatives' high command despite recent signs the party's opinion poll rating was hardening.

Although Tory strategists insisted they were receiving better feedback on the doorsteps than the polls suggest, one source said: "We're not there yet."

The party's anxieties were publicly confirmed by Clarke, the shadow business secretary, who said: "I think there's still a slim chance we can get an overall majority, which I would very much like to see.

"It is very difficult to read because the electoral geography is quite local. But my hunch is we're still in with a chance of getting a majority."

Cameron was meeting nightshift workers - including firefighters, bakers and florists - in Carlisle, Darwen and Wakefield before heading to Grimsby to greet fishermen returning to port. In a final sweep through marginal seats, he was to head for the Midlands and Wales, before closing his campaign with a rally in the southwest.

The punishing schedule was designed to reinforce the message that Cameron has the energy and drive to win the most unpredictable election in a generation. A nine-minute video was emailed to 500,000 people comparing New Labour's ambitions on taking office 13 years ago with its record. It highlights knife crime, child poverty, the recession, national debt, sleaze and government waste.

Earlier Cameron flew to Belfast to energise his Ulster Unionist sister party with assurances that a Tory government would not target Northern Ireland's extensive public sector for particularly tough cuts.

Cameron repeatedly stressed his commitment to the union between Britain and Northern Ireland. He declared: "I will never be neutral on the union."

His sentiments will cause murmurs in non-unionist circles, since his words might be taken as signalling that a Conservative government would not seek to observe equality between unionist and nationalist traditions.

And opinion polls have indicated that Peter Robinson's Democratic Unionists will continue to dominate the unionist landscape.

A Belfast Telegraph poll suggests the Ulster Unionists may win none of the province's 18 Commons seats. Such a result would be of no help to Cameron in a hung parliament. He can expect no assistance either from nationalists such as the Social Democratic and Labour Party, which is aligned to the British Labour Party.

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LIBERAL DEMOCRAT

Nick Clegg will tell voters today he will use a strong Liberal Democrat poll result to secure electoral reform as he issues his "personal guarantee" to deliver a fairer voting system.

The Liberal Democrat leader has shied away from suggesting that ending the first-past-the-post system would be a pre-condition for working with another party in a hung parliament.

But in a pledge made in national newspaper adverts and leaflets, Clegg said he would "use all the support" he earned on polling day to "deliver fairness".

Senior figures in the party now see it as crucial for the party to earn second place in overall votes if it is to secure a "moral mandate" for reforming the system.

"If that happens, the system will have been shown to be tested to breaking point and reform would be inevitable," said one.

Leaflets handed out at train stations read: "This is my personal guarantee that I will use all the support you give me to deliver fairness in Britain. I will use your votes to reform Parliament, to deliver a fairer voting system, protect your freedoms and give you the right to sack corrupt MPs."

Clegg's pledge also outlines the party's other main demands, including a radical reform of the tax system and the banking sector.

"Whatever the outcome, I believe we should be prepared to work together to fix the terrible state of our public finances and ensure economic stability," he said.

After visits to Eastbourne and Durham, Clegg was to hold a home-coming rally in his Sheffield Hallam constituency as he attempts to maintain momentum ahead of tonight's poll.

He was campaigning in the Liverpool Wavertree constituency yesterday, one of the Labour seats he is hoping to win. He told voters that, in the next 48 hours, they would "be able to change Britain for good".

The party was also having to fight off last-minute attempts to undermine its policies on defence yesterday.

Former Chief of Defence Staff Lord Guthrie, ex-MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove and former Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism co-ordinator Peter Clarke had warned that Liberal Democrat policies on Trident and Afghanistan were "a gamble".

However, Clegg dismissed the men as "a bunch of retired establishment figures" who had made big mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq war. "I am not going to apologise for calling, for example, for a proper inquiry into the allegations that somehow the British security services made us complicit in torture," he told ITV's breakfast show GMTV. "That's a very serious allegation against our best British traditions. I want to promote those traditions."

- INDEPENDENT