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All670 seats in theHouse of Commons 336 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 7,709,981[1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 4,876,409 81.6% (  5.2pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Colours denote the winning party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Composition of the House of Commons after the election. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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TheDecember 1910 United Kingdom general election was held from 3 to 19 December. It was the last general election to be held over several days[2] and the last to be held before theFirst World War.
The election took place following the efforts of theLiberal government to pass itsPeople's Budget in 1909, which raised taxes on the wealthy to fund social welfare programmes. The 1909 budget was only agreed to by theHouse of Lords in April 1910 after theJanuary general election in which the Liberals and theIrish Parliamentary Party gained a majority. The Government called a further election in December 1910 to get a mandate for theParliament Act 1911, which would prevent the House of Lords from permanently blocking legislation linked to money bills ever again, and to obtain KingGeorge V's agreement to threaten to create sufficient Liberal peers to pass that act (in the event this did not prove necessary, as the Lords voted to curtail their own powers).[3]
TheConservative Party, led byArthur Balfour with theirLiberal Unionist allies, and the Liberal Party, led by Prime MinisterH. H. Asquith, almost exactly repeated the numerical result produced in the January election, with the Conservatives again winning the largest number of votes. The Liberal Party under Asquith remained in government with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party. This was the last election in which the Liberals won the highest number of seats in the House of Commons. It was also the last United Kingdom general election in which a party other thanLabour or the Conservatives won the most seats.
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| Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Leader | Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | Arthur Balfour | 548 | 271 | −1 | 40.4 | 46.6 | 2,270,753 | −0.3 | |||
| Liberal | H. H. Asquith | 467 | 272 | −2 | 40.6 | 44.2 | 2,157,256 | +0.7 | |||
| Labour | George Barnes | 56 | 42 | 5 | 3 | +2 | 6.3 | 6.4 | 309,963 | −0.6 | |
| Irish Parliamentary | John Redmond | 81 | 74 | 5 | 2 | +3 | 11.0 | 1.9 | 90,416 | +0.7 | |
| All-for-Ireland | William O'Brien | 21 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 30,322 | +0.2 | |
| Social Democratic Federation | H. M. Hyndman | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 5,733 | −0.1 | ||
| Ind. Conservative | N/A | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 4,647 | ||
| Independent Labour | N/A | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 3,492 | |||
| Independent Liberal | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0.0 | 1,946 | |||
| Scottish Prohibition | Edwin Scrymgeour | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 913 | |||
| Ind. Nationalist | N/A | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 911 | ||
| Independent | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 57 | |||
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | 46.57% | |||
| Liberal | 44.23% | |||
| Labour | 6.36% | |||
| Irish Parliamentary | 1.85% | |||
| All-for-Ireland | 0.23% | |||
| Others | 0.78% | |||
| Liberal | 40.60% | |||
| Conservative and Liberal Unionist | 40.45% | |||
| Irish Parliamentary | 11.04% | |||
| Labour | 6.27% | |||
| All-for-Ireland | 1.19% | |||
| Others | 0.45% | |||
Both the Liberals and the Conservatives won 272 seats, however the Liberals remained the largest party due to the Speaker having been Conservative, meaning they sat with 271 MPs.
The Liberals, still lacking a parliamentary majority, again went into coalition with the Irish Parliamentary Party, who insisted ona Home Rule Bill as a condition of coalition.
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