Talk:United Kingdom general election, 1852

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Shouldn't the Peelites be separated out from Lord Derby's conservatives? As it is, the table is not very useful. john k 02:16, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I shall repeat myself. The "Conservatives" in 1852 did not win a majority. While people calling themselves "Tories" may have been in the majority in this parliament, the organized party of those supporting Lord Derby's protectionists was a distinct minority, a considerably smaller group than Russell's Whigs. It seems to me that this table is nothing less than actively misleading. john k 22:53, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree absolutely. I have Blake's Disraeli in front of me, and he breaks down the 1852 House of Commons thusly: 290-310 Conservatives, 270 Liberals, 35-40 Peelites, and 35-40 Irish. The latter two groups held the balance of power, and generally weren't well-disposed to Derby's government (or, more to the point, to Disraeli and protection). Mackensen (talk) 01:38, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Probably the best measure is the total for the Budget vote, which the protectionists lost 305-286. Mackensen (talk) 20:34, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Just to note, having read a bit on this period in Jenkins's biography of Gladstone, it would appear that, up to the budget vote, the Peelites had reluctantly tolerated the Derby government, which had, by this time, mostly abandoned protection anyway. I do wonder, though, about the numbers, which seem weird. Taking the low number for Conservatives and the high numbers for Peelites and Irish, you get 640. Taking the high number for Conservatives and the low numbers for Peelites and Irish, you get 650. Our numbers suggest 654 MPs. Also: How on earth is it not possible to know how many Irish Nationalist MPs there were? (I'm not criticizing you, Mackensen, just this list of numbers, which is apparently to be found both in Blake and Jenkins...). I'd add that, while the Peelites were not terribly well-disposed to Disraeli, they didn't much like Lord John and the Whigs, either...perhaps someone could go through the parliamentary directories and actually figure out every MP's affiliation... john k 22:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

No, I agree with what you said (it just seemd that after kicking this around for a year and a half we should say something on the article itself). The key thing, I think, is that after the Budget the Peelites drift into coalition with the Whigs (under a Peelite PM, no less) and after that there's little chance of them re-uniting with Derby and Disraeli. Through Rayment we've got an online list of every MP for the period concerned, sans affiliation. Mackensen (talk) 22:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, Gladstone, et al, supported the Derby 1858-1859 government, didn't they? I started to go through the Rayment page to list all the MPs, but i'm not sure where to go to find partisan affiliation. john k 07:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)