David Cameron has compared the 2010 election campaign to the failed allied Second World War military operation that infamously prevented British and American troops beating the Russians to Berlin.
The prime minister said his failure to secure an overall Conservative majority was a "bit like Operation Market Garden", which was later immortaliaed in the film A Bridge Too Far.
"We had to do well on every front," he told the parliamentary House Magazine. "We had to succeed in the East Kent corridor, London, the South East, the South West against the Lib Dems, North West against Labour, Yorkshire and Humberside. We did really well in lots of them but we didn’t quite make it on every front and I think we can do better."
Operation Market Garden, hatched by British General Montgomery, was a daring plan to land thousands of British and American troops behind enemy lines in order to capture key crossing points near Arnham, in Holland, to enable the allies to punch through the German lines and reach Berlin.
Cameron said one of the reasons he did not do better was that it was a time of "economic difficulty and uncertainty" and the British public was nervous about change
"After five years they will have seen yes difficult decisions but ones that on the whole they would recognise are necessary," he said in the interview due to be published on Friday.
"It’s an opportunity at the end of that to go to them and say ‘You’ve seen what we can do in government, what the team is capable of, what the policies are, what the values are and it will be a different question.”
While the prime minister insisted the coalition with the Liberal Democrats would last until 2015, he said he hoped to convince the electorate to give him an overall majority at the next election.
"But the British public are a very thoughtful and canny lot and they will take convincing," he added.