Huhne: Tactical voting hint shows Brown’s fear
By Stephen Slominski
‘Labour is scared of us’, Chris Huhne has claimed, as he reacted to Gordon Brown’s suggestion to politics.co.uk, that voters should vote tactically in order to prevent a Conservative victory in the general election.
The senior Liberal Democrat is defending a narrow 500-seat majority in Eastleigh against Conservative candidate Maria Hutchings. Local bookies rate the Labour candidate as only a 100/1 outside shot.
Canvassing in the Velmore area of his constituency yesterday evening Mr Huhne said, when shown the text of the interview: “To be perfectly honest, I am astonished.
“I don’t think any other party leader has ever said something like that.
“At the moment we have both the Conservatives on one side saying ‘if you want to get rid of Gordon Brown you have to vote conservative’ while in a lot of the seats we’re fighting against Labour what they’re saying is ‘if you want to get rid of David Cameron you have got to vote Labour’.
“The truth is they are both running a bit scared of us.”
Mr Huhne would stand to be a major beneficiary of any Labour tactical voting. The Eastleigh Lib Dems having already adopted the slogan ‘Labour can’t win here’ in an attempt to persuade Labour voters to vote tactically.
