Ivor Gaber: The tactical vote could be vital in this election

But, in the general interests of spreading laughter and gaiety, I am going to tell supporters of all (well almost all) the main parties, why they have some cause for optimism – particularly in this neck of the woods.

To start with the easiest. Conservatives control all the seats in the region bar Peter Kyle’s lonely Labour outpost in Hove and the even lonelier outpost of Green MP Caroline Lucas, in Brighton Pavilion.

The Tories did well in 2015 and are predicted to do even better as a result of their 20-point poll lead over Labour.

In addition, support for the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy seems to be growing which is not only good for her but, as a bonus, bad for Ukip who are expected to lose ground to the Conservatives.

So what’s the good news for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens?

Simply this: figures gathered by Compass, a left-of-centre pressure group, suggest that if supporters of these three parties started to co-operate they could make some surprising gains in Brighton and surrounds – something that’s going to be discussed next Tuesday evening at a meeting at the Brighthelm Centre.

The raw Compass figures suggest that if everyone who voted for one of these three parties in 2015 voted for the one most likely to win in their constituency this time round, then Labour would hold on to Hove and take Brighton Kemptown, the Greens would hold Pavilion and the Liberal Democrats would recapture Lewes and Eastbourne.

But that last sentence contains a big “if” – the “if” being the assumption that everyone who, for example, voted Green or Liberal Democrat in Kemptown in 2015 voted Labour this time, then Conservative Simon Kirby would be out of a job.

It works in theory but in practice people are not automatons – they don’t just do what the party they support tells them.

Indeed, sometimes they do the opposite.

However, by my calculations even if only half the Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat supporters vote for the candidate best placed to defeat the Conservatives where they live, the same result holds – two seats for Labour and the Liberal Democrats and one for the Greens.

So this looks like good news for Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green supporters, but life isn’t that simple.

Politics in this area is notoriously tribal.

Within hours of these sort of ideas appearing on Twitter, party loyalists went into attack mode.

Brighton Council’s Labour leader Warren Morgen saw it all as a dastardly trick to con Labour voters into supporting Green candidates in Bristol, Norwich and Sheffield so that Caroline Lucas could get an easy ride here.

Now I don’t have any recent polling evidence to hand, but something tells me that Caroline Lucas’s current majority of 8,000 is far from threatened and, given her continued support for Remain in a strongly Remain city, I’d say that, if anything, her majority is likely to increase.

And there are bigger issues at stake that narrow party interest.

History, I am sure, will show Brexit is the most critical issue that has faced this country, possibly since the Second World War.

A thumping majority for Mrs May in June will give her a clear run at negotiating the sort of Brexit that she and most of her party have been dreaming about this many a long year.

But whether you’re a Leaver or Remainder, this is too critical an issue to go through without the most rigorous of public and parliamentary debates.

A Parliament made up of an overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs, with more than just a sprinkling of determined “hard Brexiteers” in their midst, would not, I venture to suggest, be good for the long-term interests of the country.

A Parliament with a solid representation of opposition MPs able to call the Government to account would result in a better Brexit for us all.

Ivor Gaber is professor of journalism at the University of Sussex and a former political correspondent at Westminster