"...public opinion, having been so strong against the Turks, now turned against Cabinet. Not even the aggressive response by the government against the IRB in the early phases of the Land War - posturing against the "Fenian hordes" had worked well for Carnarvon and his clique in the past - could rescue the government as the economy, already stagnant or in depression for nearly a decade, worsened again. The Great Strike of 1878, which involved shipbuilders as well as railroad workers and textile millers, ground Britain to a halt, and Franchisers marched on both Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Arthur suggested to his mother they evacuate to Balmoral, which they did by stagecoach in the dead of the night, as the British Army had to be deployed for the second time in a decade to London to keep the peace. It was at Balmoral that Arthur gave his mother the suggestion that would change history - a suggestion that she call Carnarvon to Scotland to meet privately, and there ask if he could still command the support of not only Parliament but indeed his own Cabinet.
Once more, Prince Arthur's prodigious diaries come in handy in the turbulent hours of 1878, when it seemed as if a Britain frustrated both at home and abroad. It is here that he suggests, 'I asked Mother to go a step further, to make a motion that would have been unthinkable but six months ago; to not merely entice Henry (Arthur was fond of using politicians' personal names) to step down, but to demand it and dismiss him if need be. It would be an overwhelming breach of Her Majesty's understood role in the modern age, but in a crisis, Britain looks to the Crown, and between the Cape, the Straits, Ireland and now the socialists who threaten to tear London to the ground, we are in a crisis and Britannia needs her Queen.' In the end, dismissing Carnarvon would not be necessary; the embattled Prime Minister, who had knifed two predecessors in the back to reach Downing Street and had turned the United Kingdom towards gruff, continental illiberalism, understood that to be sacked by the Monarchy would be a constitutional crisis from which the country would need decades to recover. Upon arriving in Scotland, he immediately agreed with Arthur's brusque suggestion that he no longer carried the confidence of Parliament (here Arthur, all of 27 years of age, recalls telling the man twenty years older than he, 'Get on with it, Henry! You haven't a bloody clue what you're doing, do you?') and tendered his resignation, dropping the writ for new elections. In one of his final acts as Prime Minister, before telegraphing his colleagues in London to announce the surprise elections, was to recommend to the Queen that she appoint his friend and confidant Salisbury to Downing Street in the event of a third successive Tory majority.
Salisbury would never have his chance to lead a Cabinet. [1] The 1878 campaign was a heated one, as the Great Strike ended with the hopes of a new day, and the threat of an even uglier descent into chaos should the Conservatives be returned hung over the tired and frustrated land. In the end, despite suffrage laws that still severely restricted the franchise to property owners and had not been updated in nearly half a century, the aggressive advocacy of the Liberals' semi-retired "Grand Old Man" in William Gladstone and optimism about a new day among the voting public led to a hammering of the Conservatives, who lost 80 seats and gave the Liberals the first majority government since Lord Russell's nearly fifteen years earlier. 1878 marked another watershed election - only in the most ardently Protestant strongholds in Ireland did Conservative candidates earn election, an even further fall than the 1873 polls, and most of the rest of Ireland was won by the Irish Parliamentary Party. Liberals dominated in the cities and swept Scotland's boroughs, and nearly did the same in Wales. With 341 seats in Parliament, the Liberals had earned a commanding position, albeit one in which they saw their position in Ireland nearly entirely obliterated save for a handful of boroughs. Despite his long friendship with Gladstone and eminent position in the House of Lords, the Liberal leader Earl Granville stood aside to allow Lord Hartington, the party's leader in the Commons, be Prime Minister, as he recommended in his meeting with Victoria and Arthur when he was called to meet with them the week of the election. Arthur, in his diary, remarked, 'No man can be more commended in this trying hour to stay his course. Granville, who would have made as fine a Prime Minister as Wellington or Peel, stated that this was a victory for the people, born out in the Commons, and the people's government should thus be led from the Commons.' So but hours later, Spencer Cavendish, the Lord Hartington [2], was called after his long spell leading the opposition to Carnarvon's ministry to Buckingham Palace to kiss hands, and thus end the decade-long succession of Tory governments at Downing Street..."
- The Lion of Edinburgh: Prince Arthur, the Empire and the Twilight of the Victorian Age
[1] Once again, an OTL leader exits stage right, so other more forgotten figures of history can have their day in the sun. A very different 19th century Britain without PMs Disraeli, Gladstone or Salisbury
[2] Could have been PM in OTL, but Gladstone always boxed him out
I always welcome suggestions on Mexican figures to use since so much of this TL will focus on that country and I’m not super well versed in its history