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Hello, my name's David Rumsman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast. Today it is the return of our occasional series now and then with the historian Robert Saunders

in which we look at historic anniversaries and

their significance for today. This episode is about something that happened 140 years ago

and blew British politics wide open. How did an interview given by the son of the former

Prime Minister William Gladstone,

turn Irish Home Rule into a question that destroyed political parties,

exploded Westminster politics, and brought Britain to the brink of civil war.

And what are the parallels with Brexit.

Robert, we're going to be talking about how the question of Irish home rule effectively blew up British politics. It exploded like a bomb and it shattered all sorts of things,

not least party alliances and allegiances. And in this episode, we're particularly focusing on something

that happened at the turn of the year 1885, 86. So 140 years ago, as we turned from 2025 to 26,

the spark that lit the fuse took place 140 years ago, before we get on to that event, to what

extent was this a ticking time bomb? So say we go back to the mid-1880s, before the event

that we're going to be talking about earlier in 1885. And if you'd said to leading politicians

in Westminster, do you think Irish Home Rule is about to blow up British politics?

Did they have a sense that it was something that sooner or later was going to explode?

Well, Home Rule itself only really emerges as a slogan on a platform in the 1870. So I don't

think people would necessarily see this as the issue

steaming towards them on the kind of train of historical inevitability. But what it is is

the latest answer to a question that has been plaguing British politics for the last 80 years

...