Labour: the seats to watch

With incumbency turned from an advantage to a handicap, and with a fractious electorate looking to punish as much as to reward, there are many more seats than usual to watch tonight. The national trends in the polls have, as ever, been the main focus of attention, but individual battlegrounds may tell us more about the real mood in the country. I'll be looking at the three-way marginals to see what happens when the current system offers a genuine choice. Labour-held three-ways are the most significant, so that means places such as Colne Valley , Watford and Hampstead and Kilburn . I'll be watching Brighton Pavilion , and not just because I lived in Brighton for a long time. Can a small party such as the Greens squeeze itself into parliament by concentrating all its efforts on one seat? Stoke-on-Trent Central will tell us more about the threat of the BNP in ethnically diverse parts of Britain than Barking, which is predominantly white working class. Gordon Brown's first campaign visits were to some of the north Kent supermarginals . Most of those can be expected to fall. But the key Midlands seats will tell us what we really want to know – who is going to become prime minister. If the Tories take Dudley South they can expect to be the largest party. If they win Derby North they are heading for a majority. Inevitably some people will be watching what happens with a future Labour leadership election in mind. The time to resolve the kind of politics the party should embrace is for the future. So while others might secretly be hoping for a castration in Morley and Outwood , I think Labour is going to need balls to restore its potency after Thursday night. And finally, given both the Guardian's move to new offices and its even newer political allegiance, we should rechristen Islington South and Finsbury as Guardian Central. Tony Blair used to live here. The Guardian is now based here. Labour holds the seat with a very strong Liberal Democrat challenge. If the seat falls, will it have been the Guardian wot won it?