When the Macdonald government fell due to the Pacific scandal in 1873, the Governor General, Lord Dufferin, called upon Mackenzie, who had been chosen as the leader of the Liberal Party a few months earlier, to form a new government.

Upon the consequent resignation of Canovas del Castillo, he summoned Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, the Liberal leader, to form a new cabinet.

It was formed in 1977, by a merger of the Australia Party and the New Liberal Movement, after having secured former Liberal minister Don Chipp as a high-profile leader .< ref >

The province is currently governed by the BC Liberal Party, led by Premier Christy Clark, who became leader as a result of the party election on February 26, 2011.

From 1852 onwards, Disraeli's career would also be marked by his often intense rivalry with William Ewart Gladstone, who eventually rose to become leader of the Liberal Party.

The Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party, however, while it was dominated by aristocrats, and it was not until the departure of the " Two Terrible Old Men ", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party.

He formally resigned as Liberal leader and was succeeded by the Marquess of Hartington, but he soon changed his mind and returned to active politics.

Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates – this " coupon " as it became known was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself.

Jo Grimond, for example, who became Liberal leader in 1956, was MP for the remote Orkney and Shetland islands.

The 1987 election saw the Alliance's share of the votes drop slightly and it now had 22 MP's, and in the election's aftermath Liberal leader David Steel proposed a merged of the two parties.

Most SDP members voted in favour of the merger, but SDP leader David Owen objected and continued to lead a " rump " SDP, with the merger of the two parties being completed in March 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, becoming the Liberal Democrats in October 1989.

Over two-thirds of the members, and all the serving MPs, of the Liberal Party joined this party, led first jointly by Steel and the SDP leader Robert Maclennan, and later by Paddy Ashdown ( 1988 – 99 ), Charles Kennedy ( 1999 – 2006 ), Sir Menzies Campbell ( 2006 – 07 ) and Nick Clegg ( incumbent ).

*" Rinkagate ": Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe was arrested and tried for allegedly paying a hitman to murder his homosexual lover, model Norman Scott, while walking his dog on Exmoor ; the hitman only shot the dog, Rinka.

However, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, Labour opposition Tony Blair was in talks with Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown about forming a coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority at the election ; however there was never any need for a coalition to be formed as Labour won the election by a landslide.

When elections were held to the newly created Scottish Parliament in 1999, as leader of the Scottish Labour Party and through a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Dewar became the inaugural holder of the First Minister of Scotland post.

Here, he met his close friend, John Smith ( who would later become leader of the Labour Party ), Sir Menzies Campbell ( who would later become leader of the Liberal Democrats ) and Lord Irvine of Lairg ( who would serve as Lord Chancellor in the same cabinet as Dewar ) through the Dialectic Society.

Furthermore, the leader of the German Free Democratic Party ( FDP ), Philipp Rösler, serves as Vice-Chancellor of Germany and the leader of the British Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, serves as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

* Charles Kennedy-Former leader of the Liberal Democrat party and current Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Ross, Skye and Lochaber.

In 1978, Hayek came into conflict with the Liberal Party leader, David Steel, who claimed that liberty was possible only with " social justice and an equitable distribution of wealth and power, which in turn require a degree of active government intervention " and that the Conservative Party were more concerned with the connection between liberty and private enterprise than between liberty and democracy.

His successors as Liberal leader, Themistoklis Sophoulis and Georgios Papandreou, agreed, and the restoration of the monarchy was accepted.

* 1945 – The Liberal Party of Australia is founded by Robert Menzies.

In 1841 the Liberals lost office to the Conservative Party under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in opposition was short, because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free trade issue, and a faction known as the Peelites ( but not Peel himself, who died soon after ), defected to the Liberal side.

" Jupp points out that, " decline in English influences on Australian reformism and radicalism, and appropriation of the symbols of Empire by conservatives continued under the Liberal Party leadership of Sir Robert Menzies, which lasted until 1966.

Liberal scholar Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar place the Egerton fragment in the 2nd century, perhaps as early as 125, which would make it as old as the oldest fragments of John.

For twenty-two years, from its founding in 1944 to his retirement in 1966, the Liberal Party had had only one leader, Robert Menzies.

< tr bgcolor ="# DDEEFF ">< td > 32 < td > Sir Robert Askin *< td > Liberal < td > 13 May 1965 < td > 3 January 1975

* The Liberal Party's Robert Menzies website

Sir Robert William Askin GCMG, ( 4 April 19079 September 1981 ) was an Australian politician and the 32nd Premier of New South Wales from 1965 to 1975, the first representing the Liberal Party of Australia.

Despite these promises, Askin and the new Country Party Leader, Charles Cutler, lost the election to Heffron, mainly due to the adverse reactions of voters towards the November 1960 " horror budget " and credit squeeze made by the federal Liberal government of Robert Menzies.

The Liberal party became deeply split, with most Anglophones joining in the pro-conscription Union government, a coalition controlled by the Conservatives under Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden.

Russell & Gladstone ( now the senior Liberal in the House of Commons ) attempted to pass a reform bill, which was defeated in the House of Commons because of the refusal of the " Adullamite " Whigs, led by Robert Lowe, to support it.

* April 28 – Robert Menzies ' Liberal Party government in Australia is re-elected for a second term.

In mid-1965, the New South Wales Liberal government of Robert Askin was elected.

The Liberal Party ( the term was first used officially in 1868 but had been used colloquially for decades beforehand ) arose from a coalition of Whigs, free trade Tory followers of Robert Peel, and free trade Radicals, first created, tenuously under the Peelite Lord Aberdeen in 1852, and put together more permanently under the former Canningite Tory Lord Palmerston in 1859.

He abandoned this idea after being criticised in Welsh newspapers for bringing about the defeat of the Liberal Party in the 1895 election and when, at a meeting in Newport on 16 January 1896, the South Wales Liberal Federation, led by David Alfred Thomas and Robert Bird moved that he be not heard.

** The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot

On domestic issues, he favoured centralist policies at the expense of the states, which alienated powerful Liberal state leaders like Sir Henry Bolte of Victoria and Sir Robert Askin of New South Wales.

Whitlam's former solicitor-general Robert Ellicott, now a Liberal member of the House, issued a legal opinion on 16 October stating that the Governor-General had the power to dismiss Whitlam, and should do so forthwith if Whitlam could not state how he would obtain supply.

Fraser sought the backing of the retired longtime Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, and went to see Menzies in person, taking with him a 1947 statement by Menzies supporting the blocking of supply in the upper house of the Victorian Parliament.

To ensure the commission was non-partisan, Bourassa, the Liberal premier, placed Robert Cliche, a former leader of the provincial New Democratic Party in charge.

The issue came to a head in May 2006 after the sudden resignation of the Liberal Party leader, Robert Doyle, when Kennett announced he would contemplate standing in a by-election for the seat vacated by Doyle and offering himself as party leader.

Former Liberal leader Robert Doyle ultimately won the election.

David Bevan had been a supporter of the Liberal Party in his youth, but was converted to socialism by the writings of Robert Blatchford in the Clarion and joined the Independent Labour Party.