List of successful votes of no confidence in British governments
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This is a list of successful votes of no confidence in British governments led by prime ministers of the former Kingdom of Great Britain and the current United Kingdom. The first motion of no confidence to defeat a ministry was in 1742 against the Whig government of Robert Walpole, who is generally regarded as the de facto first prime minister. Since then, there have been 24 successful votes of confidence motioned against British governments. The most recent was held against the Labour government of James Callaghan in March 1979, after which Callaghan was forced to hold a general election by May and was defeated by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party.
Prior to the vote in 1979, the last successful vote of no confidence in a British government occurred in 1924, marking the lengthiest interval between such occurrences in British parliamentary history.
Defeat of the Walpole ministry (1742)
The 1742 vote of no confidence in the government of Robert Walpole was the first time that a prime minister of Great Britain resigned after a vote of no confidence by the House of Commons. Walpole is regarded as the first British prime minister, although this was not an official position until the early twentieth century. He had been continually in office since April 1721 and relied for the continuance of his government on the confidence of the King as well as that of Parliament.
As early as 1739, Walpole told the House of Commons that the ministry should be accountable to the Parliament. During the following years, the support for the government in the House of Commons decreased gradually.
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