Unionist Ascendancy

Abstract

In June 1886 the Home Rule Bill was defeated on Second Reading in the Commons by 30 votes, with 93 Liberals voting against their leader. Gladstone resigned immediately as Prime Minister, the short-lived parliament was dissolved and a general election was called for July. Gladstone, though seventy-six, remained Liberal leader, ensuring that the election became a plebiscite on his policy of Home Rule. This obliged the Liberal Unionists — as those Liberals who had voted to preserve the Union with Ireland christened themselves — to fight alongside Salisbury and the Tories. They secured Salisbury’s agreement to dissuade Tories from contesting seats held by Liberal Unionists, so that they faced only Gladstonian opposition, if any. Twenty-nine of the seventy-nine Liberal Unionist candidates were not, in fact, opposed, and many of those who did have to fight faced only an emasculated local Liberal Party.