of those serving overseas. Victory over Japan Day ensued on 15 August. Outcome The caretaker government, led by Churchill, was heavily defeated. The Labour Party led by Attlee won a landslide victory and gained a majority of 145 seats. It was the first election in which Labour gained a majority of seats and the first in which it won a plurality of votes. The election was a disaster for the Liberal Party, which lost all of its urban seats, and marked its transition from being a party of government to a party of the political fringe. Its leader, Archibald Sinclair, lost his rural seat of Caithness and Sutherland. That was the last general election until 2019 in which a major party leader lost their seat, but Sinclair lost only by a handful of votes in a very tight three-way contest. The Liberal National Party fared even worse by losing two thirds of its seats and falling behind the Liberals in seat count for the first time since the parties split in 1931. It was the final election that the Liberal Nationals fought as an autonomous party, as they merged with the Conservative Party two years later although they continued to exist as a subsidiary party of the Conservatives until 1968. Future prominent figures who entered Parliament included Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Barbara Castle, Michael Foot and Hugh Gaitskell. Future Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan lost his seat, but he returned to Parliament at a by-election later that year. Reasons for Labour victory Ralph Ingersoll reported in late 1940: The historian Henry Pelling, noting that polls showed a steady Labour lead after 1942, pointed to long-term forces that caused the Labour landslide: the usual swing against the party in power, the Conservative loss of initiative, wide fears of a return to the high unemployment of the 1930s, the theme that socialist planning would be more efficient in operating the economy and the mistaken belief that Churchill would continue as prime minister regardless of the result. Labour strengths The greatest factor in Labour's dramatic win appeared to be its policy of social reform. In one opinion poll, 41% of respondents considered housing to be the most important issue that faced the country, 15% stated the Labour policy of full employment, 7% mentioned social security, 6% nationalisation, and just 5% international security, which was emphasised by the Conservatives. The Beveridge Report, published in