The Labour Party, led by former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, gained 14 seats (301 total) but was seventeen short of an overall majority.

The Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Edward Heath, lost 28 seats (though it polled a higher share of the vote than Labour).

Heath sought a coalition with the Liberals, but the two parties failed to come to an agreement and so Wilson became prime minister for a second time, his first with a minority government.

The Scottish National Party achieved significant success at the election by increasing its share of the popular vote in Scotland from 11% to 22%, and its number of MPs from one to seven.

The election night was covered live on the BBC and was presented by Alastair Burnet, David Butler, Robert McKenzie and Robin Day.

On 20 October 1973, a group of Arab nations led by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia imposed a total oil embargo on the United States to punish the Americans for a perceived pro-Israel bias during the October war, which led to the so-called "oil shock" that plunged the world into the steepest recession since the Great Depression.

[5] The end of the "long summer" of post-war prosperity caused an immense psychological shock in the Western nations, leading the Financial Times to run a famous headline in December 1973 reading: "The Future Will Be Subject to Delay".

[6] In December 1973 Heath warned in a series of speech that because of the "oil shock" that the United Kingdom was headed into a recession and the British people should expect economic austerity.

[8] Prior to the oil shock, the government always threaten to convert electricity plants powered by coal, a threat that no longer be credibly made.

[11] In a bid to save electricity, in December 1973 the Heath government passed a bill imposing a three-day work week that came into effect on 1 January 1974, which greatly contributed to the crisis atmosphere.

[15] A number of ministers in Heath's government, most notably William Whitelaw, were opposed to calling an election in early 1974 and would preferred to wait until later in 1974 or even 1975 out of the hope the economy might be in better shape.

[15] On 10 February, the National Union of Mineworkers, as expected, went on strike, but it was more of a low-key affair than the high-profile clashes of 1972, with no violence and only six men on each picket line.

That came as a severe blow to the Conservative position, and led to accusations that the National Coal Board did not understand its own pay system and that the strike was unnecessary.

[16] Further bad news for Heath and his party came four days later, with the latest trade figures showing that the current account deficit for the previous month had been £383,000,000, the worst in recorded history.

Although Heath emphasised that Adamson was voicing a personal opinion and that his views did not express the official position of the CBI, he after the election acknowledged that the intervention had a negative impact on the Conservative campaign.

[18] Heath addressed the country on television on the evening of 7 February, and asked: Do you want a strong Government which has clear authority for the future to take decisions which will be needed?

The party's manifesto, which was largely written by the future Chancellor Nigel Lawson, was entitled Firm Action for a Fair Britain and characterised by the historian Dominic Sandbrook as "strident rhetoric".

[14] It claimed the Labour opposition had been taken over by "a small group of power-hungry trade union leaders", who were "committed to a left-wing programme more dangerous and more extreme than ever before in its history".

In the film the narrator warned that Labour would confiscate "your bank account, your mortgage and your wage packet" while pictures of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan dissolved into those of Michael Foot and Tony Benn.

For example, Anthony Crosland privately called the programme "half-baked" and "idiotic".The manifesto also committed the party to renegotiating the terms of Britain's entry into the European Economic Community and to holding a national referendum on the issue.

Unlike in previous elections, Wilson took something of a back seat and allowed James Callaghan, Denis Healey and Shirley Williams to play equal, if not greater, roles in the campaign.

The manifesto, You can Change the Face of Britain, promised voting reform and devolution, but Sandbrook described its economic policy as "impossibly vague".

[20][21] The historian Dominic Sandbrook describes the "level of partisanship" amongst the national newspapers during the election as "unprecedented" in post-war Britain, with most of the media prejudiced in favour of Heath and the Conservatives.

The Evening Standard published a piece by Kingsley Amis calling the Labour politician Tony Benn, who was to be appointed Secretary of State for Industry after the election, "the most dangerous man in Britain", and in the Daily Express, the cartoonist Cummings depicted the miners' leader Joe Gormley, Wilson and other Labour figures as French revolutionaries guillotining Heath.

[15] After the election, there were talks for a Conservative-Liberal coalition, which fell apart, leading for the Queen to ask Wilson to form a minority Labour government.