132. The pendulum swings

We've reached the point where the political pendulum has at last swung the Conservative way, giving it a working parliamentary majority for the first time in three decades.

Despite all his efforts to get that majority in 1874, Disraeli seems to have been surprised by the extent of his success. He took power without a properly worked-out set of policies to apply. In particular, since he was more interested in foreign affairs, he had little in place in the way of a domestic programme. For that he would depend on his ministers, so getting their selection right was a major task.

One of the most difficult nuts to crack would be getting Salisbury into his government, if only to stop him sniping from outside. This he pulled off in part thanks to the intervention of the Countess of Derby, though her relationships with Salisbury and other leading figures in the story is worthy of a soap opera.

The absence of a good domestic programme left a space open into which the Archbishop of Canterbury was able to insert a nasty piece of Church legislation, in the course of the last ever parliamentary session that would be overwhelmingly devoted to a religious matter.

That was in strange contrast with the instincts of Disraeli’s government which, despite being Conservative, were strangely progressive socially.

Illustration: the lady with a background worthy of a soap opera, Mary Catherine (née Sackville-West), Marchioness of Salisbury (later Countess of Derby), by Camille Silvy. National Portrait Gallery Ax53033.
Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.