Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

Not the first time. I believe the last Tory government polled fewer
votes than Labour.

No, the Conservatives in 1992 polled 14,093,007 votes (the largest number
ever cast for a single party) and Labour polled 11,560,484.

The last time the largest party didn't have the most votes was in February
1974 when the Conservatives got 11,872,810 votes and 297 seats whilst Labour
got 11,645,616 votes and 301 seats. There was a hung parliament and another
election in October. Before that you have to go to 1951 when the
Conservatives (including joint "National Liberal and Conservative"
candidates) won a majority with 13,724,418 votes whilst Labour got
13,948,385 votes. This one is complicated because there were several
uncontested seats, mainly ones in Northern Ireland with huge electorates
that would have voted heavily for the Conservatives and wouldn't have had
any Labour candidate at all so the final figure could have been much closer.

In theory our MPs represent us. A transferrable vote system would
deliver the MP who most closely represented the opinions of their
constituency. That would be a good start, it would hopefully do away
with safe seats and the allegiance to party before constituency.

Do you mean the single or multi member version? Both are in use around the
world in countries which have safe seats and very strong party systems
(Malta's two party system is easily by far the strongest in the democratic
world).