The formation of a new Government in the 2015 General Election could be decided in five key Sussex seats.

Labour has identified five of the county’s parliamentary seats as key political battlegrounds for the next election as they bid to win back power.

The party has set its sights on the three sitting MPs in Brighton and Hove, Hastings MP Amber Rudd and Crawley MP Henry Smith to turn the election in its favour.

All three seats in Brighton and Hove along with Hastings have been listed in the top 30 winnable seats in the country.

Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas is one of the most vulnerable MPs with a swing of just 1.2% of voters required to oust her – one of the 20 smallest swings in the country.

Provisional boundary changes proposed for the next election could make Ms Lucas’s task to gain re-election even tougher as models show that the redrawn Pavilion constituency would have voted Labour rather than Green in 2010.

Simon Kirby, the Brighton Kemptown MP, is also a key target for Labour having taken the long held Labour seat in 2010 with a slim 1,328 majority.

Target list

Labour drew up the target list using national swing and demographic figures, regional vote share models and local government election results.

A swing of 2% of voters in Hastings, 1.9% in Hove and 6.2% in Crawley would be enough to win Labour more Sussex seats.

Labour currently has no Sussex MPs after it was wiped out in the county in 2010.

Jack Fellows, the newly appointed Labour campaign manager in Brighton and Hove, said: “This is a clear indication that Labour is taking Brighton and Hove seriously and that we are capable of winning all three Parliamentary seats here in 2015, which will help rid the city of this Tory-led government which is making so many residents’ lives a misery.”

'Bottom line'

Hove MP Mike Weatherley said: “I think that the bottom line is that people want a government in place that is able to both listen and, after careful consideration, take the tough decisions that the country needs.

“We were left in an awful mess in 2010 and now we are getting on with getting Britain back up and running again.”

Dr Lucas said: “Since the Greens took Brighton Pavilion from Labour in 2010, it’s not especially surprising that they’d like to win it back but Labour has failed miserably to be an effective opposition to a toxic Tory-led government hell-bent on decimating public services and attacking the most vulnerable.

“I’ll be fighting hard in 2015 to continue representing Brighton Pavilion.”

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