The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy which, by legislation and convention, operates as a unitary parliamentary democracy. A hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Sir Keir Starmer since 2024, serves as the elected head of government.
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority and a total of 419 seats.
The 1987 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive general election victory for the Conservative Party, who won a majority of 102 seats and second landslide under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool in 1820 to lead a party into three successive electoral victories.
The politics of Scotland operate within the constitution of the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a country. Scotland is a democracy, being represented in both the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom since the Scotland Act 1998. Most executive power is exercised by the Scottish Government, led by the first minister of Scotland, the head of government in a multi-party system. The judiciary of Scotland, dealing with Scots law, is independent of the legislature and the Scottish Government, and is headed by the Lord Advocate who is the principal legal adviser to the Scottish Government. Scots law is primarily determined by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government shares limited executive powers, notably over reserved matters, with the Scotland Office, a British government department led by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
The October 1974 United Kingdom general election took place on Thursday 10 October 1974 to elect 635 members of the House of Commons. It was the second general election held that year; the first year that two general elections were held in the same year since 1910; and the first time that two general elections were held less than a year apart from each other since the 1923 and 1924 elections, which took place 10 months apart.
The Unionist Party was the main centre-right political party in Scotland between 1912 and 1965.
The 1950 United Kingdom general election was the first to be held after a full term of a majority Labour government. The general election was held on Thursday 23 February 1950, and was also the first to be held following the abolition of plural voting and university constituencies. The government's lead over the Conservative Party shrank dramatically, and Labour was returned to power but with an overall majority significantly reduced from 146 to just 5. There was a 2.8% national swing towards the Conservatives, who gained 90 seats. Labour called another general election the following year, which the Conservative Party won, returning Churchill to government after six years in opposition.
The 1951 United Kingdom general election was held twenty months after the 1950 general election, which the Labour Party had won with a slim majority of just five seats. The Labour government called a snap election for Thursday 25 October 1951 in the hope of increasing its parliamentary majority.
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.
Unionism in Scotland is a political movement which favours the continuation of the political union between Scotland and the other countries of the United Kingdom, and hence is opposed to Scottish independence. Scotland is one of four countries of the United Kingdom which has its own devolved government and Scottish Parliament, as well as representation in the UK Parliament. There are many strands of political Unionism in Scotland, some of which have ties to Unionism and Loyalism in Northern Ireland. The two main political parties in the UK — the Conservatives and Labour — both support Scotland remaining part of the UK.
The 2005 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005, to elect 646 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party led by the prime minister Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, with Blair becoming the second Labour leader after Harold Wilson to form three majority governments. However, its majority fell to 66 seats; the majority it won four years earlier had been of 167 seats. The UK media interpreted the results as an indicator of a breakdown in trust in the government, and especially in Blair.
The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 May 2010, to elect Members of Parliament to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system. The election resulted in a large swing to the opposition Conservative Party led by David Cameron similar to that seen in 1979, the last time a Conservative opposition had ousted a Labour government. The governing Labour Party led by the prime minister Gordon Brown lost the 66-seat majority it had previously enjoyed, but no party achieved the 326 seats needed for a majority. The Conservatives won the most votes and seats, but still fell 20 seats short. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the second general election since the Second World War to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election. This election marked the start of Conservative government for the next 14 years.
The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party often known simply as the Scottish Conservatives and colloquially as the Scottish Tories is part of the UK Conservative Party active in Scotland. It currently holds 5 of the 57 Scottish seats in the House of Commons, 31 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, and comprises 209 of Scotland's 1,227 local councillors.
This is an overview of United Kingdom general election results since 1922. The 1922 election was the first election in the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, after the creation of the Irish Free State removed Southern Ireland from the UK.
This is the results breakdown of the 2005 general election.
A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 6 May 2010 and all 59 seats in Scotland were contested. The election result in Scotland was unusual in that there wasn't any change of seats from the 2005 general election, although the Labour Party took back two seats that it had lost in by-elections. This was the last general election at which the Labour Party won a majority of seats and plurality of votes in Scotland until 2024.
A 1963 by-election for the UK parliament constituency of Dumfriesshire was held on 12 December 1963, after the sitting MP, Niall Macpherson, was elevated to the peerage as Lord Drumalbyn. Macpherson had been elected in 1959 as a National Liberal and Unionist, the latter label being that used by Conservatives in Scotland at this time. Macpherson had first been elected as a National Liberal in 1945. At the last election Macpherson had polled over 58% of the votes cast in a two-way fight against a Labour candidate and gaining a majority of 7,430 votes.
The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by prime minister David Cameron, won a unexpected majority victory of ten seats; they had been leading a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It was the last general election to be held before the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016.
A general election was held in the United Kingdom on Thursday 8 June 2017; all 59 seats in Scotland were contested under the first-past-the-post electoral system.
