Tactical voting and even ‘vote-swapping’ in the general election being urged by anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Rouse.

Mr Rouse is the secretary of Swindon 4 Europe, which has been campaigning for years, and it recently advised remain voters in Swindon to vote for the Labour candidates in both the South and North constituencies.

That caused some concern among the group’s supporters, but Mr Rouse said: “When I’m out on the street campaigning, I speak to left-wingers who blame the Liberal Democrats for policies they were part of in the past.

“And I hear Liberal Democrats saying they can’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

“I’d say to them that the first-past-the-post system means we have to vote tactically. Nothing is more important than stopping a Conservative majority and a very hard Brexit and possibly a no-deal Brexit.

“People say tactical voting is bad – but I see is very much as the people taking control of the voting system and using it to bring about what they want. It’s control from the bottom up.” Mr Rouse is also advocating ‘vote-swapping’ across the constituency boundary, where voters in different areas agree each to vote for the party most likely to win even if it would not be their first choice.