 After narrow defeat in the general election of 1964 Douglas @-@ Home resigned the leadership of his party , having instituted a new and less secretive method of electing the party leader . From 1970 to 1974 he served in the cabinet of Edward Heath as Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office , an expanded version of the post of Foreign Secretary , which he had held earlier . After the defeat of the Heath government in 1974 he returned to the House of Lords as a life peer , and retired from front @-@ line politics . 
