LONDON - Britain's opposition Conservatives launched a new drive on Monday to dislodge the ruling Labor Party from some of its strongholds in a May 6 election that has been thrown wide open by a third party.
The center-right Conservatives are battling to oust center-left Labor from government after 13 years. Both parties face a surprise challenge from the centrist Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems, whose popularity has surged in the last 10 days.
The Conservatives are ahead in the polls, but the Lib Dem bounce to second place could deprive them of the overall majority of parliamentary seats that they need to govern alone.
The polls are pointing to a "hung parliament" in which no party has an overall majority of the 650 seats. The Conservative nightmare is that this could allow Labor to cling to power by forming an alliance with the Lib Dems.
Conservative leader David Cameron said on Monday that his party had added 20 new names to the list of target seats it is campaigning to wrest from Labor's grip, suggesting that this could tip the balance and deliver a Conservative majority.
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"We are aiming for a majority government. We believe that is doable, that is deliverable. That is why we've extended our battleground," Cameron told a news conference.
Cameron denied suggestions that this meant that the Conservatives were now pessimistic about winning target seats held by the Lib Dems.
"We are working very, very hard to win seats off the Liberal Democrats in many parts of the country," he said, attacking that party as "misguided," "confused" and "out with the fairies."
Under Britain's electoral system, victory hinges not on the breakdown of the national vote but the number of parliamentary seats won by each party. Parties usually focus their efforts on winning marginal seats which can change hands with a only small swing in votes.
"What we've seen because of the meltdown in the Labor campaign is an opportunity to work even harder in certain seats which were ... quite safe Labor seats but they're not any more. They're up for grabs," Cameron said.
Cameron says a hung parliament would usher in a period of instability, with parties wrangling over political posts and pet policies rather than getting on with the crucial task of tackling Britain's worrisome budget deficit.
His concerns are widely shared by businesses, according to a survey from the British Chambers of Commerce released on Monday that found two thirds of them were worried about the potential impact of a hung parliament.
But Swiss Bank UBS said on Monday that a coalition government would likely agree measures to tighten fiscal policy, and the biggest impact on sterling would come if a single party won a majority and tried to cut the budget deficit too quickly.
"Investors should expect sterling weakness to be short-lived in the event of a hung parliament, and be wary of sterling strength if the 2010 elections result in a clear majority for any party that then tightens fiscal policy too quickly," it said in a research note.
For the Lib Dems, who say the voting system is biased against them and favors the two bigger parties, a hung parliament could offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance to obtain electoral reform in return for their support in parliament.
Labor's Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a referendum on changing the voting system, signaling that he would be open to negotiations with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg on the subject.
Cameron, still hoping that he will not need Clegg's support to govern, has rejected electoral reform -- though he has refused to explicitly rule out talking to Clegg about it in the event of a hung parliament.
The issue of electoral reform could pose a terrible dilemma for Cameron. He may have to agree to it to secure Clegg's support and form a Conservative-led government, but it could make it harder for Conservatives to win elections in future.
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