On the 21st May, 1880, the House of Commons resumed its business after a dramatic election in which the Liberals unexpectedly crushed Disraeli’s Conservative Party at the ballot box. The inaugural debate revolved around a radical Liberal MP’s refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance due to his avowed atheism. The elderly and irritable Gladstone was hardly allowed a single minute to savour the pleasure of lording it over a fresh majority in the chamber. Across the floor, a young, snappily dressed Lord Randolph Churchill rose to deliver a devastating attack on the Grand Old Man’s government for including an irreverent iconoclast in his party ranks. The searing points of Churchill’s rousing speech were applauded by a small band of loyal supporters who in turn rose to launch salvo after salvo at Gladstone’s patronage of the member for Northamptonshire. In time, the group was dubbed ‘The Fourth Party’ by the press (the other three being the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Irish Parliamentary Party). It consisted of Lord Randolph, Arthur Balfour, Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff and John Gorst. This bloc of boisterous Tories lambasted Gladstone’s administration over the next five years, but frequently aimed their rhetorical rifles at their own front bench as well, styling themselves as the only true advocates of ‘Tory Democracy’ — a vague reiteration of Disraeli’s tenets of Conservatism.

In the years before the 1880 election, Lord Randolph was socially ostracised and unofficially exiled to Ireland along with his father, the seventh Duke of Marlborough, as well as his mother and wife for the part he played in a sex scandal involving the Prince of Wales. Marlborough accepted the position of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from Disraeli and his son assumed the role of private-secretary. The ever-irascible Lord Randolph brooded in Ireland for four years. He returned to Westminster in 1880 animated and ambitious.

As it happened, his exile to Ireland was very timely. Irish Home Rule was the matter of the day and his recent residency on the emerald isle had transformed him into an authority on the political riddle. In the parliament of 1880-1885, he vehemently opposed Gladstone’s pro-Home Rule position and excoriated the Prime Minister in dozens of fiery speeches that were routinely studded with headline-worthy quotes and humiliating character assassinations (of Gladstone’s tree-chopping obsession, Lord Randolph once quipped: ‘the forest laments so that Gladstone may perspire’). These entertaining attacks on Gladstone and his massive majority in parliament endeared Lord Randolph to the public and inexorably increased his controversial celebrity. With his striking rhetorical (and sartorial) style, prominent moustache and polka-dotted bow tie, Lord Randolph became a favourite subject of the most popular caricaturists and was written about every other day in the major papers. He had a habit of leaking his most vituperative speeches to the press the night before delivery to stoke maximum interest and ensure maximum exposure.

Over five years of constant defiance and dissension, Lord Randolph honed the art of engaging journalists and discovered his extraordinary knack for charming and cajoling newspaper proprietors. He perfected the tricks of self-promotion and became a veritable lion-tamer in the incessant media circus of high Victorian politics. His impressive powers of communication in no small way compensated for his lack of an overarching philosophy. Something had to. Everytime an honest enquirer tried to determine his ideological stance, his lack of one became more and more apparent. While the Fourth Party ostensibly stood for Tory Democracy, when Randolph was asked in private what he believed the Disraeli-inspired doctrine meant, he replied: ‘To tell the truth I don’t know myself what Tory Democracy is, but I believe it to be principally opportunism’.

Although his actual ideology remained abstract, the contents of his character were as clear as could be. Lord Randolph was an adrenaline-addicted sportsman and a self-professed opportunist who was conservatively inclined but resolutely modern-minded. He was always urbane and debonair, could be very cordial, but was at times as churlish as a swatted wasp and as abrasive as a bare knuckle boxer.

This concoction of colourful qualities and contradictions made him and his gang very difficult to predict and outmanoeuvre. On some occasions he debated like an inveterate Tory, supporting protective tariffs and the rights of the House of Lords. On others, he endorsed peculiarly progressive measures. During one particular debate, he praised Bismarck’s brand of conservatism — ‘Tory Socialism’ — and its remedial measures of health and accident insurance for workers. After Lord Randolph’s premature death in 1895, Lord Rosebery wrote of Tory Democracy that ‘it was in reality a useful denomination or resource for any one who found himself with radical opinions inside the Tory party’ — a service that Nigel Farage’s Reform Party arguably offers alienated Conservative members today.

From 1880 to 1885, Churchill and his parliamentary cronies fought to broaden the electoral appeal of the Conservatives and incite a grassroots revolution within the party that would result in more authority for constituency representatives in the party’s hierarchy. In these endeavours, Lord Randolph and his little league of relatively obscure backbenchers were a success. The louder the noise they made on matters of the day like Irish Home Rule and British imperialism in Egypt, the more their place in a future Tory government seemed to be guaranteed.

Openly criticising their own leadership was undoubtedly a gamble, but it paid off. In 1886, Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House at the same time; in 1902, Balfour joined the apostolic succession of Prime Ministers and in 1885 Gorst served as Solicitor-General, receiving a knighthood for his performance in the role. The late historian and Churchill aficionado, Paul Addison, described Lord Randolph as a cross between a music-hall entertainer and a charismatic classical orator — an ideal amalgam of characteristics for a modern politician.

While there are obvious differences between the Fourth Party and Farage’s Reform (one is a registered party, the other was no more than a disruptive faction), there are a number of noticeable similarities. Both groups gained momentum by attacking the official Conservative party for being out of touch, bereft of ideas and inauthentic. Both gangs of Tory malcontents made a sport of weaving their messages into the daily news cycle, acquiring a disproportionate amount of attention from the press in the process. Reform, like the Fourth Party before them, purports to represent true conservatism and admire tradition, but also enjoys the advantages of operating in unorthodox ways.

Indeed, like the Fourth Party before it, Reform has proven to be remarkably successful at capturing the political spotlight. As of 3rd February, Reform is polling ahead of all other UK political parties according to YouGov. Farage’s adroit use of social media has evidently expanded his nascent party’s appeal and markedly improved their electoral prospects, at least for the time being. Lord Randolph was also an adept campaigner, one who was always on the lookout for novel methods of boosting his party’s popularity. He played a pivotal role, for example, in founding and promoting the Primrose League — an activist organisation that had over a million members by 1890.

The ultimate political fate of Randolph’s Tory rebels, however, should give Farage and his insurgent Reform Party cause for humility. The seemingly irresistible momentum of the Fourth Party petered out after the Liberals were succeeded in government by the Conservatives and three of the four members of the Fourth Party were employed by the new Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. While the obstreperous group was very entertaining in opposition, aired opinions that were otherwise excluded from Parliament, and claimed to be in step with the majority of voters, they proved less successful when in power. Responsibility is especially burdensome to the naturally rebellious. Lord Randolph’s four month stint as Chancellor is one of the shortest tenures at the Treasury in modern history; Balfour’s brief premiership was chequered to say the least and Gorst only held high office for six months. In the end, with a whimper and not a bang, these brilliant blow-hards and parliamentary performers evaporated out of public life.