You won’t catch Ed Miliband or David Cameron admitting that their best hope of governing after 2015 is in a coalition or a minority government. But what if their party machines have already decided that this is what’s going to happen anyway? There are secret discussions within the Labour party about scaling back the number of ‘target seats’ (the seats that it will pour the most resources into in order to win – full list here) from the official list of 106 to 80, or even just 60, which means that some in Labour think it is better to aim to be the largest party rather than out-and-out victory. I explain why party officials think this is wise and what Ed Miliband could do to stop it in my Telegraph column today.
This pruning of the key seats list could happen quite subtly: there is no need for a new list of 60 or 80 seats to be published.
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