1923 United Kingdom general election

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A general election was held in the United Kingdom 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 (158 for the Liberals) and the smallest margin (100 seats) between the first and third parties since. The Liberals' percentage of the vote, 28.8%, trailed Labour's by only one percentage point and has not been exceeded by a third party at any general election since. MacDonald formed the first Labour government with tacit support from the Liberals. Rather than trying to bring the Liberals back into government, Asquith's motivation for permitting Labour to enter power was that he hoped they would prove to be incompetent and quickly lose support. Being a minority, MacDonald's government only lasted ten months, and another general...

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