Outline of Events

The Midlothian election of 1880 signalled Benjamin Disraeli's political destruction as assuredly as the cold winds of 1881 brought his demise, and the way was now clear for William Gladstone, at the head of a large majority, to settle his scores with Beaconsfieldism and perfect his political legacy. Yet it soon became apparent that Gladstone had no idea what to do with this new lease of power beyond undoing the wicked excesses of Disraeli's period in office – especially in the sphere of imperialism. But shifting a nation's foreign policy is no easy business in a world where the Empire created a dynamic of its own, and while in Afghanistan the troops were withdrawn, disentangling Britain's relations with the Transvaal was far more difficult, as the First Boer War of 1881 testified. Yet these foreign policy dilemmas were soon eclipsed by Gladstone's annexation of Egypt in 1882. While the motives for this action are much debated, what is not questionable is that by this dramatic act of imperial expansion Gladstone liquidated the moral basis of his anti- Beaconsfield rhetoric. And Egypt led to the Sudan as Gladstone's imperial story mirrored Disraeli's, from glamorous victories to humiliating disasters – this time as General Charles George Gordon was killed at Khartoum.

In domestic politics Gladstone again found himself drawn into the affairs of Ireland, as the agricultural depression brought that island to the brink of crisis. Preoccupied as he was, and hinting repeatedly of his imminent retirement, the government drifted, being buffeted, almost immediately, by the storm over the atheist MP Charles Bradlaugh's claim that he be exempt from swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen as a Christian. The Bradlaugh controversy, ruthlessly exploited by Tory dissidents of the ‘Fourth Party’, revealed the splits between Radicals and Whigs on the government benches, and the manoeuvring between these rivals for the post-Gladstone inheritance became a defining feature of the administration. While plans for local government reform were never realized, in 1884–85 long-promised proposals to bring the County franchise into line with that in the boroughs were carried onto the statute book. But with this measure settled, Liberal differences opened still wider, and in June 1885 the government was defeated in a budget vote and resigned.