The fall of Heath and the end of the postwar settlement

The election yielded an outcome that was quite unexpected, a hung Parliament, Britain's first since 1929. The Conservatives remained the largest party in terms of votes, but Labour had won more seats. Labour, however, was 17 seats short of an overall majority. The Liberals with nearly one-fifth of the vote won just over 2 per cent of the seats, and only three seats more than the United Ulster Unionist Council, which had gained less than one-tenth of the Liberal vote.