What were the reasons for the 1905 Liberal landslide
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The 1906 General Election saw a convincing Liberal landslide of 399 Liberal seats to the Conservatives' 156. This was a stunning victory for a party that had, during the previous twenty years, only experienced three years of government; a party that had split over several issues, including Home Rule and the Boer War; and a party that had found trying to adopt a united and purposeful line very difficult indeed. With this victory came the end of Conservative dominance, and the beginning of a new era which saw the abandonment of laissez-faire and the introduction of enlightened social reform. This election result was all the more surprising in that it followed a previous election in 1900 where there had been a Conservative landslide, with 402 Tory seats to the Liberals' 183. For there to be two consecutive landslide elections is rare, but for these landslides to be awarded to one party in the first, and to the opposite party in the second, with the total number of seats held by each side literally swapping between the two parties is almost unique. It is therefore important to ascertain what caused this apparent electoral U-turn. The twenty years leading up to the 1906 election had been years of Conservative dominance. Strongly united behind the three Cs for which the party campaigned (Crown, Church, and Constitution), the Tories had dominated government, holding power for some seventeen years of the 1886-1906 period. General Elections in 1886, 1895 and 1900 all saw Conservative returns which gave the Tories a majority of at least 150 seats over their Liberal opponents. Though they lost the 1892 election, the Tories scored only 4 seats fewer than the Liberal government, whose majority over the Tories when the Irish Nationalist seats were added to the government, added up to a mere 38 seats...