1924 United Kingdom general election

1924 United Kingdom general election

← 1923 29 October 1924 1929 →

All 615 seats in the House of Commons
308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout77.0%, Increase5.9%
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Stanley Baldwin Ramsay MacDonald H. H. Asquith
Party Conservative Labour Liberal
Leader since 23 May 1923 21 November 1922 30 April 1908
Leader's seat Bewdley Aberavon Paisley (defeated)
Last election 258 seats, 38.0% 191 seats, 30.7% 158 seats, 29.7%
Seats won 412 151 40[note 1]
Seat change Increase154 Decrease40 Decrease118
Popular vote 7,418,983 5,281,626 2,818,717
Percentage 46.8% 33.3% 17.8%
Swing Increase8.8% Increase2.6% Decrease11.9%

Colours denote the winning party—as shown in as shown in § Results[a]

Prime Minister before election

Ramsay MacDonald
Labour

Prime Minister after election

Stanley Baldwin
Conservative

The 1924 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 29 October 1924, as a result of the defeat of the Labour minority government, led by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, in the House of Commons on a motion of no confidence.[1] It was the third general election to be held in less than two years. Parliament was dissolved on 9 October.[2]

The Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, performed better, in electoral terms, than in the 1923 general election and obtained a large parliamentary majority of 209. Labour, led by MacDonald, lost 40 seats. The election also saw the Liberal Party, led by H. H. Asquith, lose 118 of their 158 seats which helped to polarise British politics between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

The Conservative landslide victory and the Labour defeat in this general election have been, in part, attributed to the Zinoviev letter, a forged document that was published as if it were genuine and sensationalized in the Daily Mail four days before the election. The Labour vote increased by around one million in comparison to the 1923 general election, but this was largely due to the party putting up 87 more candidates than it had in the previous election.

The Conservatives had called the previous 1923 election early to get a mandate for moving to a protectionist trade policy of imperial preference, but had lost their majority. In 1924, they reverted to free trade and regained power. They would propose protectionism at the next general election in 1929, again losing.


Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Graper, Elmer D. (1925). "The British Election". American Political Science Review. 19 (1): 84–96. doi:10.2307/2938896. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 2938896. S2CID 145751193.
  2. ^ "Parliamentary Election Timetables" (PDF) (3rd ed.). House of Commons Library. 25 March 1997. Retrieved 3 July 2022.