A general election was held in the United Kingdom on Wednesday 15 November 1922. It was won by the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Bonar Law, which gained an overall majority over the Labour Party, led by J. R. Clynes, and a divided Liberal Party.

This election is considered one of political realignment, with the Liberal Party falling to third-party status. The Conservative Party went on to spend all but eight of the next forty-two years as the largest party in Parliament, and Labour emerged as the main competition to the Conservatives. The Labour Party also won the majority of Welsh seats for the first time, a winning streak that would continue until the 2026 Senedd Election.

The election was the first not to include Southern Ireland, due to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, under which Southern Ireland was to secede from the United Kingdom as a Dominion – the Irish Free State – on 6 December 1922. This reduced the size of the House of Commons by nearly one hundred seats when compared to the previous election.

Background

The Liberal Party had divided into two factions following the ousting of H. H. Asquith as prime minister in December 1916. From then until October 1922 the Conservatives had been in coalition with a Liberal faction (which later became known as the "National Liberals") led by David Lloyd George. Following the Carlton Club meeting, Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister and Bonar Law formed a Conservative majority government.

Although still leader of the Liberal Party and a frequent public speaker, former prime minister Asquith was no longer a particularly influential figure in the national political debate, and he had played no part in the downfall of the Lloyd George coalition. Most attention was focused on Law and Lloyd George. Asquith's daughter Violet Bonham-Carter, a prominent Liberal Party campaigner, likened the election to a contest between a man with sleeping sickness (Bonar Law) and a man with St Vitus Dance (Lloyd George).

Some of Lloyd George's National Liberals were not opposed by Conservative candidates (e.g., Winston Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless), while many leading Conservatives (e.g., former parliamentary leaders Arthur Balfour and Sir Austen Chamberlain, and former Lord Chancellor Lord Birkenhead) were not members of Bonar Law's government, and hoped to hold the balance of power after the election (comparisons were made with the Peelite group—the ousted Conservative front bench of the late 1840s and 1850s); this was not to be, as Bonar Law won an overall majority.

It was the first election at which Labour surpassed the combined strength of both Liberal parties in votes and seats. The election was also notable for Labour in that it saw future prime minister Clement Attlee elected as MP for Limehouse. Labour won the most seats in Wales (which had previously been dominated by the Liberals) for the first time.Chris Wrigley, Lloyd George and the challenge of Labour: The post-war coalition, 1918–1922 (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990). It continued to achieve holding the largest number of seats in Wales in every national election in Wales until the 2009 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom on a United Kingdom scale election, and the 2026 Senedd election at a Wales scale election.

Some Liberal candidates stood calling for a reunited Liberal Party, while others appear to have backed both Asquith and Lloyd George. Few sources are able to agree on exact numbers, and even in contemporary records held by the two groups, some MPs were claimed for both sides. By one estimate, there were 29 seats where Liberals stood against one another. This is thought to have cost them at least 14 seats, 10 of them to Labour, so in theory a reunited Liberal Party would have been much closer to, and perhaps even ahead of, Labour in terms of seats. However, in reality the two factions were on poor terms, and Lloyd George was still hoping for a renewed coalition with the Conservatives.

Neither of the leaders of the two main parties succeeded in enjoying their achievement in the election for very long; within less than a month of the election, Clynes was defeated in a leadership challenge by former Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, while Bonar Law would only last a little over seven months as prime minister before being forced to step down due to a terminal illness, resulting in Stanley Baldwin succeeding him as both party leader and prime minister. As a result, Bonar Law was the shortest-serving UK prime minister of the twentieth century. Parliament was dissolved on 26 October 1923; Bonar Law died four days later.

Party platforms

The Conservative Party offered continuity to the electorate. Bonar Law's election address stated:

The Labour Party proposed to nationalise the mines and railways, to impose a levy on financial capital, and to revise the peace treaties. It promised a higher standard of living for workers, higher wages, and better housing.

Results

Summary of seats returned

+ Party Leader MPs Aggregate votes Of total Of total Conservative and Unionist Party Bonar Law 344 5,502,298 38.5% Conservative Party Bonar Law 318 5,014,930 35.4% Unionist Party George Younger 15 379,396 2.6% Ulster Unionist Party James Craig 11 107,972 0.5% Labour Party J. R. Clynes 142 4,237,349 29.7% Labour Party J. R. Clynes 138 4,110,940 28.8% Co-operative Party 4 126,409 0.9% Liberal Party H. H. Asquith 62 2,668,143 18.9% National Liberal Party David Lloyd George 53 1,471,317 9.9% Independent 3 139,644 1.0% Independent Conservative 3 100,020 0.7% Nationalist Party Joseph Devlin 2 90,053 0.3% Communist Party of Great Britain Albert Inkpin 1 33,637 0.2% Scottish Prohibition Party Edwin Scrymgeour 1 32,578 0.1% Independent Labour 1 18,419 0.1% Constitutionalist 1 16,662 0.1% Independent Liberal 1 13,197 0.1% Irish Nationalist T. P. O'Connor 1 12,614 0.1%

Full Results

+Results of the November 1922 general election to the House of Commons of the United KingdomPartyLeaderCandidatesMPsAggregate votes Total Gains Losses Net Of total (%) Total Of total (%) Change (%)   Conservative BonarLaw482 344 82 44 38 55.9 5,502,298 38.5 0.2   Labour (Total) J. R.Clynes 414 142 92 7 85 23.1 4,237,349 29.7 8.9 J. R.Clynes 403 138 88 6 82 22.4 4,110,940 28.8 8.0   Co-operativeParty 11 4 4 1 3 0.7 126,409 0.9 0.3   Liberal H. H.Asquith 334 62 46 20 26 10.1 2,668,143 18.9 5.9   National Liberal David LloydGeorge 151 53 8 82 74 8.6 1,471,317 9.9 2.7   Independent 14 3 3 3 0.5 139,644 1.0 0.4   IndependentConservative 18 3 3 0 3 0.5 100,020 0.7 0.6   Nationalist JosephDevlin 2 2 0 5 5 0.3 90,053 0.3 1.9   Communist AlbertInkpin 5 1 colspan=2 1 — 33,637 0.2   ScottishProhibition EdwinScrymgeour 1 1 1 0 1 0.2 32,578 0.1   IndependentLabour 4 1 0 1 1 0.2 18,419 0.1 0.9   Constitutionalist 1 1 colspan=2 1 — 16,662 0.1   Farmer'sUnion HarryGerman 3 0 0 0 — 16,267 0.1 0.1   Health 1 0 0 0 — 14,193 0.0 0.1   IndependentLiberal 3 1 1 1 — 13,197 0.1 0.1   IrishNationalist T. P.O'Connor 2 1 colspan=2 — 12,614 0.1   IndependentUnionist 1 0 0 2 2 — 7,214 0.1 0.4   Agriculturalist 1 0 0 0 — 5,243 0.0   Anti-Conservative 1 0 colspan=3 — 4,964 0.0   IndependentCommunist 1 0 colspan=3 — 4,027 0.0   Agriculturalist 1 0 colspan=3 — 4,021 0.0   Anti-Parliamentary Communist GuyAldred 1 0 colspan=3 — 470 0.0   Other non-contested 0 0 colspan=2 89 — 0 0.0 Total 1,441 615 92 100.0 14,392,330 100.0 0.0 Registered voters, and turnout20,874,456 73.0 15.8

Popular vote

Parliament seats

Transfers of seats All comparisons are with the 1918 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 1922. Such circumstances are marked with a †.