Remainer alliance targets 60 seats

REMAIN parties have formed an extraordinary electoral pact to block the Tories and Brexit.

The Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens have agreed not to stand against each other in 60 seats to maximise the number of pro-European MPs in Parliament after the election.

Yesterday they claimed that at least 44 of the seats targeted were ‘highly winnable’. But polling experts said that the alliance was likely to affect only five or six constituencies.

Lib Dem candidate Mike Powell refused his party’s order to stand down and will now contest the Pontypridd seat as an independent.

The pact follows the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection in which Plaid Cymru and the Greens agreed to stand aside for the Lib Dem candidate. The Tories lost the seat by just 1,425 votes.

The alliance – brokered by the Unite to Remain group, which was set up by former Lib Dem MP Heidi Allen – will give voters a choice of a single remain-backing party in 49 constituencies in England and 11 in Wales. The Lib Dems will stand in 43 constituencies, the Greens will stand in ten and Plaid Cymru will stand in seven.

But Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, said a third of the seats are already held by Labour or the three parties.

Speaking on the BBC’s World at One he implied it would have only a relatively small effect on the Tories, saying: ‘Perhaps five or six seats that might not otherwise have been won by the Liberal Democrats if they face competition from the Greens – or in a couple of instances from Plaid – might now do so.’