The Green leader of Brighton and Hove City Council has called on his political rivals to work with his party to defeat the Conservatives at the next general election.
Councillor Jason Kitcat urged Labour supporters, trade unionists and disaffected Liberal Democrats to “seek a progressive majority” in 2015.
Councillor Warren Morgan, deputy leader of the Labour group on the council, accused Councillor Kitcat of trying to protect the Green Party’s only parliamentary seat – Brighton Pavilion.
And he added that there would be no pre-election pacts or backroom deals to save Green seats.
Councillor Kitcat wrote on his blog: “The country desperately needs a progressive majority at the next election to reverse the damage of the coalition government.
“It’s a political reality that this would absolutely have to include Labour.
“Indeed a progressive coalition’s formation could well pull the current Labour leadership back towards their more progressive roots.”
He said that the list of target parliamentary seats, which Labour published last week, ignored electoral reality.
He wrote: “The share of votes going to Labour and Conservatives has been in consistent decline for decades.
“Membership of those parties has also been in long-term decline.
“Mirroring politics in much of Europe, the British are now voting for a greater diversity of parties.
“This appears to be an irreversible trend which Labour utterly ignore by suggesting that they alone, despite their dire finances, are going to win a complete majority in the next Parliament.
“Recall that in 2010 Labour lost all their parliamentary seats in Sussex, indeed they were almost completely wiped out in the entire region.
“Yet their list targets all three parliamentary seats in the city and more beyond.
“In 2010 it was quite plain that Labour could have retained at least one seat in Brighton and Hove if they had targeted their resources instead of trying to hold all three seats.
“I can understand choosing which seat to target may have been difficult to decide on within the local party. But now they face a clean sheet.
Progressive Majority = Socialist, Communists and Head-in-the cloud utopians.