February 4, 2015

Lord Randolph Churchill’s performance as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons earned him considerable praise. The Queen noted that he had shown “much skill and judgement in his leadership” and The Times declared that “no leader of the House of Commons in recent years has met obstruction, open or disguised, with more exemplary patience.”

His ‘bons mots’ earned him some notoriety in the Treasury. Although he is reputed to have stated that he could never make out what those “damned dots meant’ (decimals), Winston later cautioned readers not to take the comment too seriously.

The first budget was certainly not a Tory budget. His objective was economy but the strategy was to reduce taxes to benefit the lower middle classes and increase taxes on luxuries such as race-horses and cartridges for game-shooting. These proposals found little support among his Cabinet colleagues. He also differed with his peers over local government, Ireland and relations with Germany.

In his famous Dartford speech he disagreed with so many Government policies that Lord Rosebery commented’ “Randolph will be out, or the Cabinet smashed up, before Christmas.” Some party members pressed Lord Salisbury to get control of Randolph. but the Prime Minister told his wife, “The time is not yet.”

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Winston, watching his father’s career with keen interest from his Brighton school, approved of the Dartford speech because it “cut the ground from under the feet of the Liberals.” All contact with his parents was from a distance. His mother’s social life was far too busy to permit a trip to Brighton. His father was travelling throughout Britain or holidaying on the continent. Even during a November excursion to Brighton there was no time to visit his son’s school.