The 40 Key Seats

This afternoon, I've been looking specifically at pages 6 and 7 of the Times, with the firmly right-wing headline, "Tories target 40 key seats to give them precious margin of victory". Precious as in extremely useful when getting bills passed, not precious as in that thing Smeagol keeps banging on about.

Basically, the Conservatives can become the largest party if they can get hold of 72 more seats: and as they gained 33 last time round, that's definitely manageable. However, in order to get the 326 seats they need for an overall majority, they'll need 116: and that's where the 40 key seats come in. In theory, they're easy enough to get - Stafford, seat no. 40, has a majority of 2,121 - but failure to get them all could lead to a hung parliament and the dreaded coalition governments of yesteryear.

So, not surprisingly, the Tories are throwing huge amounts of money at these seats: and you can't blame their attitude, nor fault their commitment. The problem last time was that they targeted too many "key seats", and thus spread themselves a bit too thinly. Lord Ashcroft has gone on record as saying that of the 130 seats they targeted, 50 were unwinnable. This time around it should be easier to make gains: but marginal seats are hard to predict.

My own personal reason for being interested is that two of the key seats are in my home county of Gloucestershire. Cheltenham, held by Martin Horwood of the Lib Dems, is target number 6; and Stroud, held by David Drew of Labour (my local MP), is target number 15. Mr Drew's majority is remarkably small - he won by just 350 votes in 2005 - and to be honest, I can see him losing this time around. He's been our MP since 1997, and has been commended in his role as a backbencher rebel, but the local council is staunchly Conservative, and so is the area: before he got in, Stroud had a Tory MP for 47 years. I'm not too sure that Cheltenham will fall to the Tories, however, as it seems to have handled the recession relatively well.

Truro and Falmouth, the constituency that I currently live in, is not such an easy target: and as such, it's at number 86. Frankly, anyone could win that one: it's a new constituency for 2010, but the area has seen a Conservative MP, a Labour MP, and a Liberal Democrat MP (in that order) within the last 15 years. It'll be interesting to see if it remains yellow on the map come May.

What is slightly worrying is that only three of the 40 seats are in Scotland and Wales: perhaps not surprising, but are the Conservatives going to risk dividing the UK again? From the map in the times, it doesn't look like they're willing to risk trying to win support in areas that still hold a grudge against Thatcher (such as the North-East), which begs the question: is Cameron going to be any different?

We'll see: the Tories have got to get in first. And in Stroud, they're well placed to do that. Target no. 15, you have been chosen well.

Chris