LEFT-WING rock star Billy Bragg will vote Lib Dem in the election.
But the working-class singer-songwriter has not ditched Labour. Billy, 42 - who penned hits A New England and Sexuality - is voting tactically to oust the Tories in his local seat of Dorset West. Billy, who moved to the south west from Barking, East London, has even set up a website to encourage vote-swopping. Here he tells GRANT ROLLINGS why he is a fan of tactical voting.

ELECTION time in sleepy Dorset. Everyone goes to the polls and, well, nothing happens.Last time, as a Labour landslide swept the country, the Conservative Party held on to all eight Dorset seats - the only county in the UK that remained wholly blue. Why did this happen? Is Dorset the truest-bluest county of all? Well, no actually. If you look at the figures from 1997, 60 per cent of the electorate voted against the Tories. However, that anti-Tory vote was split in every constituency between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, allowing the Conservative candidate to slip through the middle and win. Frankly, all this was far from my mind when, in 1999, I moved with my family into an old seaside guest house overlooking the English Channel near Weymouth. But as the election approached, I began to contemplate how best to use my vote.

Where we live in West Dorset, the Labour Party have no chance of winning outright. They came third last time, more than 10,000 votes behind the Liberal Democrats. The Tories won, but with a slender 1,860 majority over the Lib Dems. For a traditional Labour voter like myself, this posed a difficult question - instead of voting for my party of choice, should I cast a tactical vote for the Lib Dem candidate?

If only I lived 20 miles east of here in South Dorset, where Labour came just 77 votes behind the Tories last time and the Lib Dems trailed in third. Then it hit me - there must be Lib Dem supporters in South Dorset who are facing a similarly anguished decision about tactically voting for the Labour Party. If I could make contact with one of those voters, we could agree on trust to vote for each other's party of choice, so that, in effect, my Lib Dem vote here would be mirrored by a Labour vote there. The quickest way to find such a "voting valentine" had to be via the internet.

Over Easter, with the help of two local "netheads", I set up a website - http://www.votedorset.net - to pair up tactical voters in West and South Dorset. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that tactical voting went on at the last election, but with many new boundary changes coming into force, it was difficult then to know who best to vote for to defeat the Conservative candidate. A national tactical voting website - http://www.tacticalvoter.net - has been set up to focus the tactical vote this time. They will give you all the information you need about your constituency, as well as providing posters which can be downloaded for free.

Since news of our tactical voting campaign broke, the local newspaper has been full of angry letters, mostly from disgruntled Tory rear-admirals who know the game is up. But some have been from loyal Labour supporters who don't back our campaign. Why should they vote for the Lib Dems? Well, firstly because voting Labour in West Dorset only helps the Tories to hold on to the seat - the truth is the Lib Dems cannot win without our support. Secondly, William Hague's future as leader of the Conservative Party will be judged on how many seats he can keep. If, like me, you have been dismayed by the petty-minded, xenophobic language of the Tory campaign, a vote to unseat the local Tory MP could also have the effect of making the Tory high command think again about leading the party in an ever rightwards direction. Thirdly, a tactical vote will also send a message to Tony Blair that traditional Labour voters are no longer prepared to be taken for granted.

The truth is that the British electorate is much more sophisticated than politicians give them credit for. It is clear that our present first-past-the-post system has a distorting effect on genuine democracy. Just as it is unfair that a Tory MP is elected here even though most of us voted against him, so it is also unfair that the Labour Party should have a 179-seat majority in Parliament when winning only 45 per cent of the votes cast.

Although it is not considered a priority by Tony Blair, I believe some form of proportional representation offers us not just a fairer way of representing our political views, but the best hope of engaging the millions who will make a negative sort of tactical vote next week - by not voting at all.