What they are trying to get is a party that the majority agrees upon.
I'm not sure how you work out AV gets "what no one particularly wanted" as it's looking for a majority share. You rank in order of preference ( just like you would do if you were going to see a film in the cinema) In the first round lets say your first choice had the lowest share, then your votes would be transferred to your second choice and so on until you get a majority share.
Not voting to me is just crazy. I personally believe all politics breed corruption. However, you have to make the best of a bad situation.
FPTP also doesn't work in Europe, in fact NO other european country uses FPTP, it's only undeveloped countries that still use it with the exception of Canada. And it's not just Labour that vote for their leader using the AV Vote, All parties do this.