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.

( Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.

In December 2009, shortly after the election of Tony Abbott to the Liberal Party leadership, Fraser resigned from the Liberal Party.

The Nationals hold a larger membership base than either the Liberal or Labor Parties, although in the larger eastern states its vote is in decline and its traditional supporters are turning instead to prominent independents such as Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Peter Andren in Federal Parliament and similar independents in the Parliaments of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, many of whom are former members of the National Party.

In the general election of 1997, for example, 13. 5 million people voted for the Labour Party led by Tony Blair ; 9. 6 million for the Conservative Party, led by John Major, the previous Prime Minister ; and, 5. 2 million for the Liberal Democrat Party led by Paddy Ashdown.

For example, Tony Blair met Leader of the Opposition Iain Duncan Smith and Leader of the Liberal Democrats Charles Kennedy on privy council terms to discuss the evidence for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

< tr bgcolor ="# DDEEFF ">< td > 40 < td > Tony Rundle < td > Liberal < td > 18 March 1996 < td > 14 September 1998

Oldfield, a councillor on Manly Council in suburban Sydney and at one time an employee of Liberal minister Tony Abbott, was the organisational architect of the new party.

Between 1993 and 1997, he was a notable proponent of co-operation between the Liberal Democrats and " New Labour ", and had regular secret meetings with Tony Blair to discuss the possibility of a coalition government.

* Shadow Cabinet of Australia ( Liberal / National Coalition ) ( Tony Abbott )

In 1996 Oldfield was employed as a staff member by federal Liberal MP Tony Abbott.

Riding redistribution placed Copps in a serious nomination battle with another Liberal MP, Tony Valeri, who was named to Martin's cabinet as Minister of Transport.

The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties withdrew their candidates in Bell's favour in a plan masterminded by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's press secretary.

The initial fleet was eventually replaced, starting in 1923 with The Squire ( named after William Squires, a former mayor of Woolwich ), and in 1930 with the Will Crooks ( Labour MP for Woolwich, 1903-1921 ) and the John Benn ( Sir John was a member of London County Council, Liberal MP for Wapping, and grandfather of Tony Benn ).

It has been suggested that votes for the local Liberal Democrat candidate, the Iraq war, and negative feeling towards Tony Blair ( who visited Scarborough the day before polling day to consolidate support ) resulted in the marginal loss.

The arrest was criticised by political figures including Conservative Leader David Cameron, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and veteran left-wing Labour politician Tony Benn.

( The panel of 2009 consisted of Baroness Falkner ( Liberal Democrat peer ), David Halpern ( the Institute for Government and former advisor to Tony Blair ), Rohan Silva ( special advisor to George Osborne MP ), David Walker ( the Audit Commission ), and Prospect ’ s editor, David Goodhart, and managing editor, James Crabtree.

He became leader of the Tasmanian Labor Party in 1997 and won the state election in 1998, defeating the Liberal Party government under Tony Rundle.

He again attempted to win the Liberal nomination in the riding of Lincoln in the 1993 general election, but the nomination eventually went to Tony Valeri after an acrimonious fight between Munro and the Liberal Party national office.

Anthony John " Tony " Abbott ( born 4 November 1957 ) is the Leader of the Opposition in the Australian House of Representatives and federal leader of the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia.

Hockey was a Minister in the Howard Government and is currently the Shadow Treasurer under Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in the Liberal / National Coalition.

The present Opposition at a Federal level is the centre-right Coalition, which is led by Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party of Australia.

In a Liberal Party pre-selection ballot on 3 March 2012, Secker lost Liberal Party endorsement for the Division of Barket at the next election on the first ballot to Mount Gambier lawyer Tony Pasin, only receiving 78 votes to his opponent's 164 votes.