| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Turnout | 76.4% (0.1 pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Composition of the House of Commons after election | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The 1931 United Kingdom general election was held on Tuesday, 27 October 1931. It saw a landslide election victory for the National Government, a three-party coalition which had been formed two months previously after the collapse of the second Labour government. [1] Journalist Ivor Bulmer-Thomas described the result as "the most astonishing in the history of the British party system". [2]
Unable to secure support from his cabinet for his preferred policy responses to the economic and social crises brought about by the Great Depression, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald split from the Labour Party and formed a new national government in coalition with the Conservative Party and a number of Liberals. MacDonald subsequently campaigned for a "Doctor's Mandate" to do whatever was necessary to fix the economy, running as the leader of a new party called National Labour within the coalition. Disagreement over whether to join the new government also resulted in the Liberal Party splitting into three separate factions, including one led by former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
Collectively, the parties forming the National Government won 67% of the popular vote and 554 (90.1%) of 615 seats in the House of Commons. Although the bulk of the National Government's support came from the Conservative Party, which won a majority in its own right with 470 seats, MacDonald remained Prime Minister. The Labour Party suffered its greatest ever defeat—losing four-fifths of its seats, including the seat of leader Arthur Henderson—and became the official opposition with just 52 MPs. The collapse of the Liberals into competing factions also ended their time as a significant force in British politics; the breakaway National Liberals were eventually absorbed into the Conservatives in 1947, while the main Liberal Party would spend the next half-century in the political wilderness until its revival in the 1970s.
It is the most recent election in which any single party (the Conservatives) received an absolute majority of the votes cast, and the last UK general election not to take place on a Thursday. It was also the last election until 1997 in which any single party won more than 400 seats.
After battling with the Great Depression for two years, the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald was faced with a budget crisis in August 1931. The cabinet deadlocked over its response, with several influential members—such as Arthur Henderson—unwilling to support budget cuts (in particular a cut in the rate of unemployment benefit) which were pressed by the civil service and opposition parties. Crucially, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden refused to consider deficit spending or tariffs as alternative solutions, and without any other options to address the crisis the government was forced to resign. However, MacDonald was encouraged by King George V to form an all-party National Government in coalition with the Conservatives and Liberals in order to break the deadlock.
The initial hope was that the coalition government would hold office for only a few weeks in order to address the country's immediate economic crises, then dissolve for a return to ordinary party politics—but when the government was forced to remove the pound sterling from the gold standard it became clear that it would require more time in office. Meanwhile, the Labour Party expelled all those who were supporting the government, and MacDonald's decision to lead a Conservative-dominated coalition instead of the party he had co-founded was labelled a "betrayal" by his erstwhile colleagues and supporters. [3]
The Conservatives began pressing their partners to fight an election together as a combined unit in order to secure a mandate for radical economic reform, and MacDonald's supporters from the Labour Party formed the National Labour Organisation to support him. While initially against an early election, MacDonald came to endorse the idea in order to take advantage of Labour's unpopularity due to its poor economic record in office.
However, the Liberals were sceptical about an election and had to be persuaded. The key issue was the Conservatives' wish to introduce protectionist trade policies: the majority of the Liberals, led by Sir Herbert Samuel, were opposed, considering support for free trade to be a non-negotiable component of the Liberal political tradition. The argument split the party in half: Samuel withdrew the Liberals from the National Government (though continued to lend it their confidence, and still stood in the election as part of the coalition), while the National Liberals—under the leadership of Sir John Simon—remained, willing to support protectionism.
While this was happening, former prime minister David Lloyd George was still technically the Liberal Party's leader—however, due to having undergone an operation in early 1931, with a long recuperation, he was unable to take up a ministerial role when the National Government was formed. While initially supportive of both the coalition and its protectionist trade policy, he strongly opposed the proposal for an election. He and a third faction of Liberal MPs—the Independent Liberals—also broke away, and ran in the election on an anti-National Government platform.
Parliament was dissolved on 7 October. [4] In order to appease the various factions within the coalition its manifesto avoided proposing any specific policy, and instead asked voters for a "Doctor's Mandate" to do whatever was necessary to rescue the economy. Individual candidates were then allowed to state their support for policies such as trade tariffs.
Labour campaigned on opposition to public spending cuts, but this was a difficult position to justify when many of the cuts had initially been agreed when Labour was in government. By 1931, Labour had lost significant economic credibility due to soaring unemployment—especially in coal, textiles, shipbuilding and steel—and the party's working class base increasingly lost confidence in its ability to solve the most pressing problems facing the country. [5]
An additional problem for Labour came from the 2.5 million Irish Catholics in England and Scotland, who had traditionally been a major component of their working class base. By 1930 a number of Catholic bishops had grown increasingly alarmed at the party's stances on Communist Russia, birth control, and especially regarding funding Catholic schools, and the Church began to warn its members against voting Labour. This shift played a major role in Labour's collapse in support in some urban areas. [6]
The election was a landslide for the National Government coalition, which won 67.2% of the popular vote and 518 seats out of 615 in the House of Commons—for both, it stands as the largest share ever secured in a British general election since the passage of the Reform Act 1832. (The next-best results were both was secured by the Whigs in 1832, who won 67.01% of the vote and 67.02% of seats under a substantially different electoral system with a much smaller electorate.) However, by far the largest share of the government's seats was won by the Conservatives, and the party's 470 seats also remains the record for the largest share of the total seats in Parliament (76.4%) won by any single party.
The victory gave the National Government a clear mandate to enact its policy platform, which the coalition believed would pull the economy out of the doldrums of the Great Depression. MacDonald remained Prime Minister, but the Conservatives were the dominant party within the coalition—National Labour contested only 20 seats, winning 13—and with his increasingly poor health over the course of the parliament he came to be more of a figurehead for the government rather than an active leader.
Labour's loss of vote share (a drop of 6.5%) was average by historical standards, but the inefficiency of its vote distribution under first-past-the-post meant that the party suffered a net loss of 235 out of 287 seats. This remains Labour's most significant absolute and per capita election loss, and it stood as the record for greatest number of seats lost by any party in a single general election until the Conservatives lost a net of 251 seats under Rishi Sunak in 2024.
Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Leader | Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
National Government | |||||||||||
Conservative | Stanley Baldwin | 518 | 470 | 210 | 0 | +210 | 76.4 | 55.0 | 11,377,022 | +16.9 | |
Liberal | Herbert Samuel | 112 | 33 | 15 | 42 | −27 | 5.4 | 6.5 | 1,346,571 | −17.1 | |
National Liberal | John Simon | 41 | 35 | 35 | 0 | +35 | 5.7 | 3.7 | 761,705 | N/A | |
National Labour | Ramsay MacDonald | 20 | 13 | 13 | 0 | +13 | 2.1 | 1.5 | 316,741 | N/A | |
National | N/A | 4 | 4 | 4 | 0 | +4 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 100,193 | N/A | |
National Government (total) | Ramsay MacDonald | 694 | 554 | +236 | 90.1 | 67.2 | 13,902,232 | +5.5 | |||
Labour Opposition | |||||||||||
Labour | Arthur Henderson | 490 | 46 | 2 | 243 | −241 | 7.5 | 29.4 | 6,081,826 | −7.7 | |
Ind. Labour Party | Fenner Brockway | 19 | 3 | 3 | 0 | +3 | 0.5 | 1.2 | 239,280 | N/A | |
Other unendorsed Labour | N/A | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | +2 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 64,549 | N/A | |
NI Labour | Jack Beattie | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 9,410 | N/A | |
Labour (total) | Arthur Henderson | 516 | 52 | −235 | 8.5 | 30.6 | 6,395,065 | −6.5 | |||
Other opposition parties | |||||||||||
Independent Liberals | David Lloyd George | 6 | 4 | 4 | 0 | +4 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 106,106 | N/A | |
Nationalist | Joseph Devlin | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 72,530 | +0.3 | |
Communist | Harry Pollitt | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 | 69,692 | +0.1 | |
Independent | N/A | 7 | 3 | 0 | 3 | −3 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 44,257 | N/A | |
New Party | Oswald Mosley | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 36,377 | N/A | |
National (Scotland) | Roland Muirhead | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 20,954 | +0.1 | |
Independent Labour | N/A | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0 | 0.1 | 18,200 | 0.0 | |
Scottish Prohibition | Edwin Scrymgeour | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0 | 0.1 | 16,114 | 0.0 | |
Liverpool Protestant | H. D. Longbottom | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 7,834 | N/A | |
Agricultural Party | J. F. Wright | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 6,993 | N/A | |
Ind. Nationalist | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 3,134 | N/A | |
Independent Liberal | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 2,578 | −0.1 | |
Plaid Cymru | Saunders Lewis | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 2,050 | 0.0 | |
Commonwealth Land | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,347 | N/A |
This differs from the above list in including seats where the incumbent was standing down and therefore there was no possibility of any one person being defeated. The aim is to provide a comparison with the previous election. In addition, it provides information about which party gained the seat.
These are available at the PoliticsResources website, a link to which is given below.
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites, and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election. Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the party leader, its dominant figure was David Lloyd George.
James Ramsay MacDonald was a British statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931. From 1931 to 1935, he headed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members. MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party as a result.
The 1979 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the House of Commons. The election was held following the defeat of the Labour government in a no-confidence motion on 28 March 1979, six months before the Parliament was due for dissolution in October 1979.
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of the Labour Party in 1945, with a majority of 144 seats and the first of two consecutive landslide victories.
The February 1974 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 28 February 1974. The Labour Party, led by Leader of the Opposition and former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, gained 14 seats but was seventeen short of an overall majority. The Conservative Party, led by incumbent Prime Minister Edward Heath, lost 28 seats. That resulted in a hung parliament, the first since 1929. Heath sought a coalition with the Liberals, but the two parties failed to come to an agreement and so Wilson became prime minister for a second time, his first with a minority government. Wilson called another early election in September, which was held in October and resulted in a Labour majority. The February election was also the first general election to be held with the United Kingdom as a member state of the European Communities (EC), which was widely known as the "Common Market".
The 1945 United Kingdom general election was a national election held on Thursday 5 July 1945, but polling in some constituencies was delayed by some days, and the counting of votes was delayed until 26 July to provide time for overseas votes to be brought to Britain. The governing Conservative Party sought to maintain its position in Parliament but faced challenges from public opinion about the future of the United Kingdom in the post-war period. Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed to call for a general election in Parliament, which passed with a majority vote less than two months after the conclusion of the Second World War in Europe.
The 1959 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 8 October 1959. It marked a third consecutive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, now led by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. For the second time in a row, the Conservatives increased their overall majority in Parliament, this time to a landslide majority of 100 seats, having gained 20 seats for a return of 365. The Labour Party, led by Hugh Gaitskell, lost 19 seats and returned 258. The Liberal Party, led by Jo Grimond, again returned only six MPs to the House of Commons, but managed to increase its overall share of the vote to 5.9%, compared to just 2.7% four years earlier.
The 1935 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 14 November. It resulted in a second landslide victory for the three-party National Government, which was led by Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party after the resignation of Ramsay MacDonald due to ill health earlier in the year. It is the most recent British general election to have seen any party or alliance of parties win a majority of the popular vote.
The National Labour Organisation, also known simply as National Labour, was formed in 1931 by supporters of the National Government in Britain who had come from the Labour Party. Its leaders were Ramsay MacDonald (1931–1937) and his son Malcolm MacDonald (1937–1945).
The 1929 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 30 May 1929, and resulted in a hung parliament. Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party won the most seats in the House of Commons for the first time despite receiving fewer votes than the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. The Liberal Party, led again by former Prime Minister David Lloyd George, regained some of the ground lost in the 1924 general election and held the balance of power. Parliament was dissolved on 10 May.
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. It was the third general election to be held in less than two years. Parliament was dissolved on 9 October.
The 1923 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 December 1923. The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, won the most seats, but Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, and H. H. Asquith's reunited Liberal Party gained enough seats to produce a hung parliament. It is the most recent UK general election in which a third party won over 100 seats and the most narrow gap, of a "mere" 100 seats, between the first and third parties since. The Liberals' percentage of the vote, 29.7%, trailed Labour's by only one percentage point and has not been exceeded by a third party at any general election since.
The 1922 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 15 November 1922. It was won by the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, which gained an overall majority over the Labour Party, led by J. R. Clynes, and a divided Liberal Party.
The 1918 United Kingdom general election was called immediately after the Armistice with Germany which ended the First World War, and was held on Saturday, 14 December 1918. The governing coalition, under Prime Minister David Lloyd George, sent letters of endorsement to candidates who supported the coalition government. These were nicknamed "Coalition Coupons", and led to the election being known as the "coupon election". The result was a massive landslide in favour of the coalition, comprising primarily the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals, with massive losses for Liberals who were not endorsed. Nearly all the Liberal MPs without coupons were defeated, including party leader H. H. Asquith.
The 1906 United Kingdom general election was held from 12 January to 8 February 1906. The Liberals, led by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, won a landslide majority at the election. The Conservatives led by Arthur Balfour, who had been in government until the month before the election, lost more than half their seats, including party leader Balfour's own seat in Manchester East, leaving the party with its fewest recorded seats ever in history until 2024. The election saw a 5.4% swing from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party, the largest-ever seen at the time. This has resulted in the 1906 general election being dubbed the "Liberal landslide", and is now ranked alongside the 1924, 1931, 1945, 1983, 1997, 2001, and 2024 general elections as one of the largest landslide election victories.
In the politics of the United Kingdom, a National Government is a coalition of some or all of the major political parties. In a historical sense, it refers primarily to the governments of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain which held office from 1931 until 1940.
In parliamentary politics, balance of power is a situation in which one or more members of a parliamentary or similar chamber can by their uncommitted vote enable a party to attain and remain in minority government. The term may also be applied to the members who hold that position. The members holding the balance of power may guarantee their support for a government by either joining it in a coalition government or by an assurance that they will vote against any motion of no confidence in the government or will abstain in such a vote. In return for such a commitment, such members may demand legislative or policy commitments from the party they are to support. A person or party may also hold a balance of power in a chamber without any commitment to government, in which case both the government and opposition groupings may on occasion need to negotiate for that person's or party's support.
Edward Anthony Strauss was an English corn, grain and hop merchant of German-Jewish background. He was a Liberal, later Liberal National Member of Parliament.
Richard John Russell was a British dental surgeon and Liberal later Liberal National politician.
The National Liberal Party, known until 1948 as the Liberal National Party, was a liberal political party in the United Kingdom from 1931 to 1968. It broke away from the Liberal Party on the issue of abandoning free trade and supporting protectionism, and later co-operated and merged with the Conservative Party.