Despite the heated rhetoric, opinion in the country was divided. The Unionists, with 47% of the votes, were outpolled by the Liberals and their allies from the Labour Party. The outcome was a hung parliament, with the Liberals relying on Labour and the Irish Parliamentary Party for their parliamentary majority. As the price for their continued support, the Irish nationalist MPs demanded measures to remove the Lords' veto so that they could no longer block Irish Home Rule. They even threatened to vote down the Budget in the House of Commons (Irish Nationalists favoured tariff reform and abhorred the planned increase in whisky duty) until Asquith pledged to introduce such measures.