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16 April 2011
Last updated at 16:40 ET
Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown has accused George Osborne of trying to "frighten" voters off changing the voting system.
He said the chancellor and Conservative colleagues had resorted to "bizarre" and "tawdry" tactics.
Voters will go to the polls in just under three weeks in a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system.
It comes as a survey suggests a significant hardening of public opinion against the switch.
'Deeply disturbed' Mr Osborne sparked anger last week when he said it "stinks" that the main backer of the pro-AV camp was the Electoral Reform Society - whose commercial arm Electoral Reform Services Ltd (ERSL) runs election services.
He claimed that it stood to benefit financially from a switch, something ERSL has denied.
Writing in the Observer, Lord Ashdown said: "Their strategy is clear: throw as much mud as you can, don't let the issue be discussed openly and frighten the public over the next three weeks into voting to preserve the power the present First-Past-the-Post system gives them.
"This strategy stinks of the same odour which has surrounded our politics recently.
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote
"For the chancellor of the exchequer... to claim that there is something 'dodgy' about the Electoral Reform Society donating cash to a campaign in favour of electoral reform is bizarre.
"He graphically shows why we need to change our politics. Why we need to clean it up."
Lord Ashdown said he respected opposing views, but said he was "perplexed and deeply disturbed... that those running the 'No' campaign haven't once put forward a positive case for the current system and, instead have spent their time lying about AV".
He also laid into another Tory cabinet minister - Baroness Warsi - for choosing to make a speech warning that AV would benefit extremists near the location of the Battle of Cable Street against Oswald Mosley's fascists.
"To have Baroness Warsi stand on the site of race riots in the 1930s and say that a yes vote will help the BNP is as tawdry as it is indefensible", he wrote.
A ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror - weighted to reflect those certain to vote - found 37% backed AV with 43% against, compared with a 36% to 30% split the other way in January.
Matthew Elliott, campaign director of No to AV said: "The polls show that as people are learning more about the complex, unfair and expensive Alternative Vote system, they understand why it is completely the wrong sort of change.
"There is much work still to be done to make sure the UK isn't saddled with a £250 million mess, but it is encouraging that the British people know a very bad idea when they see it."
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He said the chancellor and Conservative colleagues had resorted to "bizarre" and "tawdry" tactics.
Voters will go to the polls in just under three weeks in a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system.
It comes as a survey suggests a significant hardening of public opinion against the switch.
'Deeply disturbed' Mr Osborne sparked anger last week when he said it "stinks" that the main backer of the pro-AV camp was the Electoral Reform Society - whose commercial arm Electoral Reform Services Ltd (ERSL) runs election services.
He claimed that it stood to benefit financially from a switch, something ERSL has denied.
Writing in the Observer, Lord Ashdown said: "Their strategy is clear: throw as much mud as you can, don't let the issue be discussed openly and frighten the public over the next three weeks into voting to preserve the power the present First-Past-the-Post system gives them.
"This strategy stinks of the same odour which has surrounded our politics recently.
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote
This strategy stinks of the same odour which has surrounded our politics recently”
End Quote
Lord Ashdown
"For the chancellor of the exchequer... to claim that there is something 'dodgy' about the Electoral Reform Society donating cash to a campaign in favour of electoral reform is bizarre.
"He graphically shows why we need to change our politics. Why we need to clean it up."
Lord Ashdown said he respected opposing views, but said he was "perplexed and deeply disturbed... that those running the 'No' campaign haven't once put forward a positive case for the current system and, instead have spent their time lying about AV".
He also laid into another Tory cabinet minister - Baroness Warsi - for choosing to make a speech warning that AV would benefit extremists near the location of the Battle of Cable Street against Oswald Mosley's fascists.
"To have Baroness Warsi stand on the site of race riots in the 1930s and say that a yes vote will help the BNP is as tawdry as it is indefensible", he wrote.
A ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror - weighted to reflect those certain to vote - found 37% backed AV with 43% against, compared with a 36% to 30% split the other way in January.
Matthew Elliott, campaign director of No to AV said: "The polls show that as people are learning more about the complex, unfair and expensive Alternative Vote system, they understand why it is completely the wrong sort of change.
"There is much work still to be done to make sure the UK isn't saddled with a £250 million mess, but it is encouraging that the British people know a very bad idea when they see it."
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