Balfour remained a bachelor for the rest of his life, his serious intention to marry never renewed.

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.

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.

Lansdowne remained at the Foreign Office under Salisbury's successor Arthur Balfour.

In 1894 he was elected as Chairman of the London School Board, standing down after one year when the Unionists won the general election and he became Secretary of State for India under Salisbury, which he remained until 1903, the last year under the premiership of Arthur Balfour.

Balfour served for many years as dean of the faculty of medicine in Edinburgh University and he was an enormously successful teacher of botany, lacing his scientific lectures with theological asides, as he remained profoundly wedded to natural theology.

In 1971, most of the Waimea Plains Railway closed, but sixteen kilometres from Lumsden to Balfour remained open until 1978.

He remained as Lord Advocate when Arthur Balfour became Prime Minister in 1902, but the following year he succeeded Lord Balfour of Burleigh as Secretary for Scotland, with a seat in the cabinet.

Another biographer believes that they had " no direct physical relationship ", although he dismisses as unlikely suggestions that Balfour was homosexual, or, in view of a time during the Boer War when he replied to an important message whilst drying himself after his bath, Lord Beaverbrook's famous claim that he was " a hermaphrodite " whom no-one ever saw naked.

A new feature was brought into the case in November 1917, when Mr Balfour, with the authority of the War Cabinet, issued his famous declaration to the Zionists that Palestine ' should be the national home of the Jewish people, but that nothing should be done – and this, of course, was a most important proviso – to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

A new feature was brought into the case in November 1917, when Mr Balfour, with the authority of the War Cabinet, issued his famous declaration to the Zionists that Palestine ' should be the national home of the Jewish people, but that nothing should be done — and this, of course, was a most important proviso — to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Instead, with Arthur Balfour ’ s Constructive Unionism approach to settling the Irish Question they enacted many important reforms introduced by the Irish members, who, on the other hand, made no effort to settle their party differences.

An important consequence of the war was the British conquest of the Palestinian Mandate, and the Balfour Declaration promising a home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

In 1919, in response to Palestinian Arab fears of the inclusion of the Balfour declaration to process the secret society al-Kaff al-Sawada ’ ( the Black-hand, its name soon changed to al-Fida ’ iyya, The Self-Sacrificers ) was founded, it later played an important role in clandestine anti-British and anti-Zionist activities.

He later served as Foreign Secretary, when his Balfour Declaration was an important episode in the leadup to the creation of Israel.

His candidature was endorsed by Arthur Balfour, then leader of the House of Commons, with the words –" it is important that the loyalists of Ulster be represented by eloquent and able men ".

In 2002, the campaign won an important victory when it forced UK based company Balfour Beatty and other European companies, like Swedish based Skanska, to withdraw from the project.

Four, or perhaps five men were chiefly concerned in the labour – the Earl of Balfour, the late Sir Mark Sykes, and Messrs. Weizmann and Sokolow, with perhaps Lord Rothschild as a figure in the background.

This was as a counter to Arthur Balfour, known for his " masterly witticisms ", because the party felt they needed a warrior-like figure.

Lady Evelyn Barbara " Eve " Balfour ( 1899-1990 ) was an English farmer, educator, organic farming pioneer, and a founding figure in the organic movement.

Despite Law's efforts to forge consensus within the Conservatives, Balfour was unable to hold the two sides of his party together, and resigned in December 1905.

In 1926, however, the Balfour Declaration was passed, affording every British dominion within the British Empire equal rank and bestowing upon them their own right of direction of foreign issues.

This meant that Israel controlled the entire former British mandate of Palestine that under the Balfour Declaration was supposed to allow a Jewish state within its borders.

The town took its name from the geographic townships of Rayside and Balfour, which fell within the boundaries of the new town.

The Constitution: It stated that with over 450, 000 Jews having now settled in the mandate, the Balfour Declaration about " a national home for the Jewish people " had been met and called for an independent Palestine established within 10 years, governed jointly by Arabs and Jews :" His Majesty's Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country.

The party was saved after Salisbury's retirement in 1902 when his successor, Arthur Balfour, pushed a series of unpopular initiatives such as a new education bill and Joseph Chamberlain called for a new system of protectionist tariffs.

Chamberlain and other Conservatives such as the Earl of Balfour argued for supporting Lloyd George, while former party leader Andrew Bonar Law argued the other way, claiming that breaking up the coalition " wouldn't break Lloyd George's heart ".

However, threatened by backbench opposition, Balfour rescinded the agreement and demanded party unity.

Indeed, for a short period in early 1906, Chamberlain was the de facto leader of the Unionist alliance in the House of Commons, as the Conservative party leader, and former Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour had lost his seat in the election ( though he soon managed to return to parliament after a conveniently-arranged by-election ).

As Prime Minister, Balfour oversaw such events as the Entente Cordiale, but his party was split over tariff reform and in December 1905 he relinquished power to the Liberals.

On Lord Salisbury's resignation on 11 July 1902, Balfour succeeded him as Prime Minister, with the approval of all sections of the Unionist party.

Hoping to split the difference between the free traders and tariff reformers in his cabinet and party, Balfour came out in favour of retaliatory tariffs — tariffs designed to punish other powers that had tariffs against British goods, supposedly in the hope of encouraging global free trade.

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.

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.

This decision was taken on the private advice of leading members of the party including former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.

Balfour advised the monarch that in a democratic age it was inappropriate for the Prime Minister to be a member of the House of Lords, especially when Labour, who had few peers, had become the main opposition party in the Commons.

The suggestion was no more Law's than it was any of the other dozens of conservatives who had suggested this to Balfour, and his comment was simply an attempt to " pass the buck " and avoid the anger of Austen Chamberlain, who was furious that such an announcement had been made without consulting him or the party.

Balfour refused all suggestions of party reorganisation until a meeting of senior Conservatives led by Lord Salisbury after the December 1910 electoral defeat issued an ultimatum demanding a review of party structure.

Facing a resurgent Liberal opposition and the threat of an internal party split, Balfour eventually took the Unionists into opposition in December 1905, and in the ensuing rout in the election of 1906, Austen Chamberlain found himself one of the few surviving Liberal Unionists in the House of Commons.

With the Unionists in disarray after two successive electoral defeats in 1910, Balfour was forced from his position as party leader in November 1911.

Given their standing in the party, only Chamberlain and Long had a realistic chance of success and though Balfour had intended Chamberlain to succeed him, it became clear from an early canvass of the sitting MPs that Long would be elected by a slender margin.

In the aftermath of the general election of 1892, Balfour and Chamberlain wished to pursue a programme of social reform, which Salisbury believed would alienate " a good many people who have always been with us " and that " these social questions are destined to break up our party ".

In the following years, Lansdowne continued as Opposition Leader in the Lords, his stature increasing when Balfour resigned as party leader and was replaced by the inexperienced Andrew Bonar Law, who had never held cabinet office.