1880 United Kingdom general election

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The 1880 United Kingdom general election was held from 31 March to 27 April 1880. It saw the Liberal opposition triumph with 352 seats. Its intense rhetoric was led by the Midlothian campaign of the Liberals, particularly the fierce oratory of Liberal leader William Gladstone. He vehemently attacked the foreign policy of the government of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, as utterly immoral. The endeavours of the Disraeli government in Africa, India, Afghanistan and Europe, which were only partially successful and often accompanied by early, humiliating defeats, gave a good deal of fodder to Gladstone for his attacks. Further, Disraeli's favoured dealing with the Turks, who were responsible for horrendous atrocities against Balkan Christians also laid him open to religious attacks, especially in Gladstone's pamphlet "The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East" (1876). Gladstone's campaign was a synthesis of the two approaches in a populist manner adapted towards liberalism...

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