A Labour backbencher today publishes a list of seats at which only small numbers of third placed Labour or Liberal Democrat supporters need to switch votes to oust the Tories.
The call is to be made today by Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham and an ally of the foreign secretary, Robin Cook. He has received discreet encouragement from Downing Street and does not expect Tony Blair or the Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy to call openly for tactical voting.
Mr MacShane recognises he faces a backlash from many colleagues who would prefer to fight for every vote. The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has been especially critical of the Lib Dems, revealing he would have quit the cabinet if Tony Blair had tried to bring Lib Dems in after the last election.
The Lib Dems have been unrelenting in their attack on the the war chest of the chancellor, Gordon Brown.
Mr Macshane will nevertheless say in a speech in York: "Liberal Democratic and Labour voters have an historic opportunity in the next election. It is to keep the seats won in 1997 and focus our anti-Tory fire on the most reactionary Conservative party seen in over a century."
He will say Labour faces a choice between "a retreat into tribalism - with its attendant ritual of insults and incantations or the continuation of an inclusive politics based on radical, progressive, tolerant ideas and policies which a broad majority of the population were willing to support".
He will insist the biggest prize is to ensure Labour MPs like Phil Woolas, Lorna Fitzsimons and Stephen Twigg as well as Lib Dem MPs such Vincent Cable or Jenny Tonge are not replaced by the new breed of Hague candidates intolerant on gays, blacks and refugees and anxious to get the levers of power to dismantle social Britain.
Mr MacShane believes Labour voters need to look to the Romsey byelection result where Labour tactical voting helped the Lib Dems win a previously safe Tory seat. He will also point out there are 12 Tory seats where, if fewer than one in 10 of electors who voted for the third place candidate had voted differently, there would have been seven more Labour MPs and five more Lib Dem MPs in Parliament.
"All it takes is for a couple of hundred voters to vote tactically and we can push back the Tories to the margins of British politics. Labour in parliament has to be big enough to shrug off the cheap little Lib Dem squibs and gnat bites and show the British people that non-tribal politics in the national interest is what we are now about".
"Economic and social questions are not where the Lib-Dems are strong but they speak for civic freedoms, for increased tolerance, for respect for the environment in language which makes sense to millions."
House of Commons figures show that if 10% of third party votes switched to the second placed candidate - either Labour or Lib Dem - then 12 Tory seats would fall. If 20% third party voters switched, 21 seats would fall.
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