THE people of Worcester joined millions across the country in firmly rejecting changing the way MPs are voted into power.

Out of nearly 30,000 votes cast in the city 20,083 said no to the Alternative Vote system while 9,525 voted yes in Thursday’s referendum.

The district of Wychavon also slapped down the yes campaign, tabling 31,916 votes against change compared to 11,168 for.

Figures for Malvern Hills and Wyre Forest were unavailable as your Worcester News went to print but with almost three-quarters of the votes counted across the UK last night, the no campaign had established an unassailable lead of about 69 per cent to 31 per cent, securing victory in almost every corner of the country.

Worcester’s MP Robin Walker, a Conservative backbencher firmly in the no camp, said: “I’m glad we have got an emphatic result.

“I think this does put the issue about electoral reform to bed for the forseeable future. It will be a testing time for the coalition over the next couple of weeks but I’m confident we can keep things together. I think understandably quite a lot of Liberal Democrat MPs are pretty shell-shocked but I don’t really buy the argument that because they have done badly we need to do things to make them happy .

“We have always made it pretty clear we are in the coalition to do things in the national interest and that doesn’t change because they have a bad day at the polls but I think we can all ride this out.”

Senior Liberal Democrats – who had led the campaign for the Alternative Vote – conceded defeat and acknowledged that their long-cherished dream of electoral reform is now off the agenda at least until the end of the Parliament.

The rejection of AV, under which voters rank candidates in numerical order, was a further humiliation for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, for whom a referendum on voting reform was his main prize in negotiations to form a coalition last year.

But prominent Lib Dems insisted that, despite the setback on electoral reform and the party’s disastrous showing in elections to English councils, the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, Mr Clegg’s position was safe and the coalition would survive.

While members from Worcester’s Liberal Democrat and Labour parties were conspicuous by their absence for the count at the city’s Guildhall yesterday afternoon, Tom Rouse, spokesman for West Midlands Yes To Fairer Votes campaign, was there.

He said: “We are obviously disappointed by the result.

“I don’t think it reflects the campaign we ran in the West Midlands but at the end of the day the choice lay with the British people and they have chosen first-past-the-post.”

When asked whether he thought an argument for changing the voting system using proportional representation might now come to the fore, he said: “The votes don’t suggest people have the appetite for electoral reform.”

Meanwhile, counters and activists were at the Guildhall at least an hour extra than they needed to be because the system at the regional office in Birmingham crashed.

THE ALTERNATIVE VOTE: WORCESTER RESULTS No: 20,083 Yes: 9,525 Total: 29,729 Turnout: 40.73%