Arthur Balfour - Later Career

Later Career

After the disaster of 1906 Balfour remained party leader, his position strengthened by Joseph Chamberlain's removal from active politics after his stroke in July 1906, but he was unable to make much headway against the huge Liberal majority in the House of Commons. An early attempt to score a debating triumph over the government, made in Balfour's usual abstruse, theoretical style, saw Campbell-Bannerman respond with: "Enough of this foolery," to the delight of his supporters in the House. Balfour made the controversial decision, with Lord Lansdowne, to use the heavily Unionist House of Lords as an active check on the political program and legislation of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. Numerous pieces of legislation were vetoed or altered by amendments between 1906 and 1909, leading David Lloyd George to remark that the Lords had become "not the watchdog of the Constitution, but Mr. Balfour's poodle." The issue was eventually forced by the Liberals with Lloyd George's so-called People's Budget, provoking the constitutional crisis that eventually led to the Parliament Act 1911, which replaced the Lords' veto authority with a greatly reduced power to only delay bills for up to two years. After the Unionists had failed to win an electoral mandate at either of the General Elections of 1910 (despite softening the Tariff Reform policy with Balfour's promise of a referendum on food taxes), the Unionist peers split to allow the Parliament Act to pass the House of Lords, in order to prevent a mass-creation of new Liberal peers by the new King, George V. The exhausted Balfour resigned as party leader after the crisis, and was succeeded in late 1911 by Andrew Bonar Law.

Balfour remained an important figure within the party, however, and when the Unionists joined Asquith's coalition government in May 1915, Balfour succeeded Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. When Asquith's government collapsed in December 1916, Balfour, who seemed for a time a potential successor to the premiership, became Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George's new administration, but was not actually included in the small War Cabinet, and was frequently left out of the inner workings of the government. Balfour's service as Foreign Secretary was most notable for the issuance of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a letter to Lord Rothschild promising the Jews a "national home" in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

Balfour resigned as Foreign Secretary following the Versailles Conference in 1919, but continued in the government (and the Cabinet after normal peacetime political arrangements resumed) as Lord President of the Council. In 1921–22 he represented the British Empire at the Washington Naval Conference.

In 1922 he, along with most of the Conservative leadership, resigned with Lloyd George's government following the Conservative back-bench revolt against the continuance of the coalition. Bonar Law soon became Prime Minister. In 1922 Balfour was created Earl of Balfour. Like many of the Coalition leaders he did not hold office in the Conservative governments of 1922–4, although as an elder statesman he was consulted by the King in the choice of Baldwin as Bonar Law's successor as Conservative leader in May 1923. When asked by a lady whether "dear George" (the much more experienced Lord Curzon) would be chosen he replied, referring to Curzon's wealthy wife Grace, "No, dear George will not but he will still have the means of Grace."

Balfour was again not initially included in Stanley Baldwin's second government in 1924, but in 1925 he once again returned to the Cabinet, serving in place of the late Lord Curzon as Lord President of the Council until the government ended in 1929. In 1925 he visited the Holy Land.

Apart from a number of colds and occasional influenza, Balfour had enjoyed good health until the year 1928, and remained until then a regular tennis player. Indeed 4 years previously he had been the first President at its founding of the International Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain. At the end of 1928 most of his teeth had to be removed and he began to suffer from the unremitting circulatory trouble which ended his life. Late in January 1929 Balfour was conveyed from Whittingehame to Fisher's Hill, his brother Gerald's home near Woking, Surrey. In the past he had suffered from occasional bouts of phlebitis and by late 1929 he was immobilised by it. Finally, soon after receiving a visit from his friend Chaim Weizmann, Balfour died at Fisher's Hill on 19 March 1930. At his request a public funeral was declined and he was buried on 22 March beside members of his family at Whittingehame in a Church of Scotland service, though he also belonged to the Church of England. Despite the snowy weather, attenders came from far and wide. By special remainder, the title passed to his brother Gerald.

His obituaries in The Times, The Gaurdian and the Daily Herald made no mention of the declaration for which he is most famous.