Will the UK 2024 general election be a re-run of 1992, or 1997? Get any two politics geeks together and when the warm-up to their conversation will touch on this topic. Every now and again 1945 or 1964 is mentioned. I should like to propose 1880. It’s often described as the first modern political campaign and there are some parallels with now and some twists and turns that might appeal to the many former Conservative prime ministers who dwell among us.

Of William Gladstone’s ‘Midlothian Campaign’, The Times wrote at the time: ‘Everything is overdone…does [the country] wish the conduct of public affairs to be at the mercy of excitement, of rhetoric, of the qualities which appeal to a mob rather than to those which command the attention of a Senate?’ (Leader, 20 November 1879). Gladstone had stood down as Liberal leader after losing the 1874 election to Benjamin Disraeli’s Tories. According to some, there was not much love for Disraeli in 1874: a loathing for Gladstone led to the result. Gladstone went away to lick his wounds, but found himself drawn back in through crises arising from the decay of the Ottoman Empire. By 1876 he published his pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. The print run was extended ten-fold. Whether by design or through events, he was back in the game. 

Three things were reshaping the conduct of British politics. First, the franchise was wider and, second, a secret ballot had been introduced. It was no longer as effective to buy places on the electoral roll for people who’d then vote for you. Third, the rise of the telegraph had revolutionised newspaper content. Put these three together, and the current challenge for political parties was managerial – organising your vote – and rhetorical – making a case in a way that tugged at the sensibilities of the time. Gladstone didn’t need to worry about the first, and was able to mop up the second.

There was already pushback against running long Parliamentary reports – ‘gentlemen’, we are told, didn’t want to read that kind of stuff over their breakfast. But all the serious papers would take the extra-parliamentary speeches by the best orators – and Gladstone knew exactly how to exploit this. Using techniques that will be well known to modern PR professionals, Gladstone and his team would pre-publicise new pamphlets and speeches so that every new publication or appearance would get maximum exposure. Press deadlines and local circumstances meant that every now and then speeches would be reported on that weren’t actually in the end given, but the result was that no one was unaware of what the former PM had to say about the moral challenges of the time. The schedule was punishing: in a two week period Gladstone gave 30 speeches with a total in-person audience of 87,000. And for all of the protests from The Times, it was estimated that in a six month period, the paper published a quarter of a million of Gladstone’s words.

All this could have been very dry: there were no pictures and no breathless gossipy commentary. None the less Gladstone’s campaign, modern as it was, also required circumstances that might not have held twenty years later. In 1880, people were used to hearing sermons each week of 90 minutes plus. And Gladstone’s audience would have been expected to hold considerable political knowledge. His preachy style could grate – his use of ‘pious cant’ was not always welcome. But his ability to be a fiery preacher, with an emerging, inclusive secularism, set him up as the true arbiter of what it meant to be a Liberal. His campaign differed in tone, not in substance, from that of his party leader, and he got away – not being the leader – without having to set out a programme of clear remedies to the country’s ills.  

Conservative commentators argue that the Disraeli government simply ran out of money, luck and reasonable weather (think 1879 and you remember the tremendous storms that, among other things, brought about the Tay Bridge disaster). Whatever the truth, by the time the votes had been counted it was almost inevitable that Hartington, the party leader, would tell a dismayed Queen Victoria that she wasn’t done with Gladstone.

Fast forward to the present day, and the many Conservatives who have an eye, not to the current general election but to the party leadership contest that is expected to follow it. They will be attempting to show flair, media mastery and, in some cases a ruthless understanding of their freedom to manoeuvre without any attempt at collective responsibility. As Gladstone has shown us, the keeper of the flame is the winner of the crown.

I happen to be at the rather fabulous library of William Gladstone, in Harwarden, north Wales, and despite knowing next-to-nothing about the former PM on my arrival, I’ve had tremendous fun in the stacks. Historians – please feel free to make corrections. Other fellow nerds – if not 1992, 1997 or 1880, then when?