Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 27 February to 1 December 1868 (succeeding Edward Smith-Stanley and preceding William Ewart Gladstone) and from 20 February 1874 to 21 April 1880 (interrupting Gladstone's terms). He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, fathering the liberal-conservative ideology of one-nation conservatism and defining his party's policies and broad outreach.
Biography[]
Benjamin Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, Middlesex, England in 1804 to a Sephardic Jewish family, but his father left Judaism after a dispute at a synagogue, and the family converted to Anglicanism. Disraeli founded The Representative newspaper, but it crashed after six months, and he instead became a traveler and writer. Disraeli also began to form political views based on his rebellious nature; he supported the radical idea of electoral reform, while he supported the Tory position on protectionism. In 1831 and 1832, he stood for election to the House of Commons as a Radical candidate, but, in 1835, he fought a by-election in Taunton as a Tory candidate. He represented a new generation of reform-minded Tory politicians, and he hoped to forge a paternalistic Tory-Radical alliance, although he was unsuccessful. He became a sharp critic of Robert Peel's government, criticizing his free trade policies. In 1847, he defended the ability of Jews to enter Parliament by taking a slightly altered oath than the Christians, calling Christianity a "completed Judaism"; his speech was poorly received by his own party, and the Tories and the Anglicans were hostile to the reform, which failed; it was not passed until 1858. During the 1850s and 1860s, under Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.
Premierships[]
The statue of Disraeli in Parliament Square, 2020
Upon Smith-Stanley's retirement in 1868, Disraeli briefly served as Prime Minister before losing that year's election. During his first premiership, Disraeli ended public executions and electoral bribery, had the Post Office buy up the telegraph companies, and amended the school law, the Scottish legal system, and the railway laws. He returned to the opposition until the election of 1874, when he led the Tories to win an outright majority in Parliament. His second term was dominated by concerns that the Russian Empire would rise in power as the Ottoman Empire declined, and he arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company in 1878; that same year, he also organized the Congress of Berlin, which obtained peace terms in the Balkans which were favorable to Britain and unfavorable to Russia. This diplomatic victory established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen; in 1876, Queen Victoria made him Earl of Beaconsfield. However, the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the Anglo-Zulu War undermined his public support, and he angered British farmers by refusing to reinstate the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With his rival William Ewart Gladstone, the Liberal Party leader, launching a massive speaking campaign, the Conservatives lost the 1880 general election. He died a year later at the age of 76.