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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/labour-mps-back-no-av-campaign.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="Former cabinet minister David Blunkett is one of a number of Labour politicians joining a campaign against voting reform" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/min-labour-mps-back-no-av-campaign.jpg" alt="Former cabinet minister David Blunkett is one of a number of Labour politicians joining a campaign against voting reform"/></a></p>
<p>A group of senior Labour politicians will help spearhead the campaign for a &#8220;no&#8221; vote in next year&#8217;s referendum on changing the voting system.</p>
<p>Former cabinet ministers John Prescott, David Blunkett, John Reid and Lord Falconer have signed up as patrons of the &#8220;NO to AV&#8221; campaign while Margaret Beckett will be its president.</p>
<p>They will join forces with a raft of Tory Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary William Hague, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and Education Secretary Michael Gove.</p>
<p>The heavyweight line-up is a significant boost to efforts to persuade the country to vote against switching from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote (AV) system for general elections.</p>
<p>Allowing a public vote &#8211; due to be held on May 5 &#8211; was a key concession won by the Liberal Democrats as part of coalition negotiations with the Conservatives.</p>
<p>Labour promised a referendum on AV in its manifesto and the change is supported by new leader Ed Miliband, but MPs have a free vote on the issue and there is significant Labour opposition.</p>
<p>The senior figures will speak publicly for the campaign as well as acting as advisers. Labour former minister and party vice-chair Joan Ryan will be the campaign&#8217;s deputy director and another former minister Jane Kennedy is national organiser.</p>
<p>Ex-foreign secretary Mrs Beckett said: &#8220;This is so important it has to rise above party politics.</p>
<p>&#8220;Only three other countries use AV and one, Fiji, is abandoning it. It led to a significant drop in the number of people voting in Australia &#8211; that&#8217;s why they had to make voting compulsory. AV doesn&#8217;t help democracy, it stands in its way.&#8221;</p>
<p>Lord Prescott attacked the referendum as a &#8220;shoddy little deal that the Lib Dems made with the Tories as their price for power&#8221; and Lord Reid said there was &#8220;no credible intellectual or political case that can be made for AV&#8221;.</p>
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