The 1923 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 December 1923.^[1] 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. The Liberals' percentage of the vote, 29.7%, has not been exceeded by a third party at any general election since.

Quick Facts All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority, Turnout ...

1923 United Kingdom general election

← 1922 6 December 1923 1924 →
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All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	71.1%, 1.9 pp
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 Last election 344 seats, 38.5% 142 seats, 29.7% 115 seats, 28.8%[lower-alpha 1] Seats won 258 191 158[note 1] Seat change 86 49 43 Popular vote 5,286,159 4,267,831 4,129,922 Percentage 38.0% 30.7% 29.7% Swing 0.5 pp 1.0 pp 0.9 pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in § Results
Prime Minister before election Stanley Baldwin Conservative Prime Minister after election Ramsay MacDonald Labour

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MacDonald formed the first ever 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 election was held in October 1924.

In May 1923, Prime Minister Bonar Law fell ill and resigned on 22 May,^[2] after just 209 days in office. He was replaced by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin. The Labour Party had also changed leaders since the previous election, after J. R. Clynes was defeated in a leadership challenge by former leader Ramsay MacDonald.

Having won an election just the year before, Baldwin's Conservative Party had a comfortable majority in the House of Commons and could have waited another four years, but the government was concerned and the Conservatives were divided. Baldwin felt the need to receive a mandate from the people, which, if successful, would strengthen his grip on the Conservative Party leadership and allow him to introduce tariff reform and imperial preference as protectionist trade policies over the objections of the free trade elements of his party.

Oxford historian and Conservative MP John Marriott depicts the gloomy national mood:

The times were still out of joint. Mr. Baldwin had indeed succeeded in negotiating (January 1923) a settlement of the British debt to the United States, but on terms which involved an annual payment of £34 million, at the existing rate of exchange. The French remained in the Ruhr. Peace had not yet been made with Turkey; unemployment was a standing menace to national recovery; there was continued unrest among the wage-earners, and a significant strike among farm labourers in Norfolk.

Confronted by these difficulties, convinced that economic conditions in England called for a drastic change in fiscal policy, and urged thereto by the Imperial Conference of 1923, Mr. Baldwin decided to ask the country for a mandate for Preference and Protection.^[3]

Parliament was dissolved on 16 November^[4] and the result backfired on Baldwin, who lost a host of seats to Labour and the Liberals, resulting in a hung parliament. A reformation of the Conservative-Liberal coalition which had governed the country until the previous year was not practical, as Baldwin had alienated both of the two most prominent Liberals, Asquith and David Lloyd George.

Faced with the choice of supporting either a minority Conservative or Labour government on an issue-by-issue basis, Asquith ultimately chose the latter, partly because Lloyd George's faction was vehemently opposed to working with Baldwin (though Asquith's allies were themselves unenthusiastic about such a prospect), and partly because he believed that Labour's electoral success thus far was mostly the result of the previous split in the Liberal Party, and that a Labour government would expose the party's policies as unworkable, allowing for the Liberals to overtake them at the next election. The Liberals therefore combined with Labour to vote down the King's Speech prepared by Baldwin, causing his government to fall. For the first time in history, Labour formed a government.

• All comparisons are with the 1922 election.
  • In some cases the change is due to the MP defecting to the gaining party. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
  • In other circumstances the change is due to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1923. Such circumstances are marked with a †.

• List of MPs elected in the 1923 United Kingdom general election
• 2019 United Kingdom general election, the next UK general election after 1923 to be held in December.
• 1923 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland