What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Seventy years ago a new government was elected. It set about creating a national health service delivering treatment based on your need, not your ability to pay.

It founded a social security system to help those in need and provide pensions for people who’d toiled all their lives. And it built millions of homes fit for our war heroes.

It had a huge public mandate to do all this – nearly 50 per cent of the country had voted for Labour.

Seven decades on we have a ­government that has slashed care budgets and left the NHS creaking and demoralised.

It’s a government that seeks to brutally dismantle our welfare system, making mums on low wages subsidise an inheritance tax break for people inheriting homes worth £1million.

And what mandate do the Tories have? Barely a third of the people who voted – 37 per cent – chose the Conservatives yet the party got half the seats in Parliament.

The Lib Dems secured 7.9 per cent of the vote but only got eight MPs and the Greens got a million votes but just one MP.

Remarkably UKIP came third with 12.6 per cent and nearly four million votes but only managed to get one seat.

As for the SNP, while they won 50 per cent of the vote in Scotland they got 56 MPs there – 95 per cent of Scottish seats.

Scottish Labour got just under half the number of votes the SNP did but only has one MP in Parliament.

Four years ago we had a ­referendum on introducing ­alternative voting.

If it had been adopted, voters would rank the candidates in order of preference. If your first choice didn’t win, your second choice might get in.

(Image: PA)

I was against it as it was tied to a boundary review that would cut 50 constituencies.

That was a concession the Tories gave to the Lib Dems to get them to jump into coalition with them – and we all know how that worked out for Nick Clegg’s lot.

But when we see this government pushing through another five years of austerity, fleecing the poor to ­bankroll the rich and ­considering bombing Syria and Libya, we must ask, “what right have you got to do that?”

They haven’t. There were 19.4 million votes cast against the Tories. That’s nearly 20 million people with no say or stake in this government.

Going around the country at the last election I met people who couldn’t be bothered to vote because they lived in a safe seat.

In one Tory seat I was told: “You could put up a hat stand in a blue rosette and they’d still get in, John.”

(Image: PA)

Now he has a majority, David Cameron will seek to scrap 50 seats to make it even easier to win next time, while he floods the Lords with more of his unelected cronies.

It’s an assault on democracy. And we need to fight back.

I think it’s time to give people a real say in a more democratic way, put an end to job-for-life MPs in so-called safe seats and make every constituency a marginal one.

Labour’s next leader is being chosen by transferable voting and it’s proving to be a really exciting contest.

So I’d like to see the next Labour leader make the case for a similar system for parliamentary elections.

We already have these fairer voting systems for the European elections, Welsh and Scottish elections so why not for general elections?

It would mean Labour working with all the opposition parties to make the case. It might even mean our party losing seats.

But we can’t have Cameron rigging the next general election.

People need to feel their vote ­actually counts for something.

So even if they don’t get their first choice of candidate, they get a second chance – not a wasted vote.