Dizzy, no question. That his no-nonsense foreign policy was the superior is quite obvious, and given how much we did put our feet in it over Egypt that's a fairly major consideration by itself; and it's hardly like Dizzy was a bad domestic premier. He did a lot of good at home, including tentative social reform: "permissive" it most certainly was, but what exactly is he up against on that count? It's not like Gladstone was some kind of social-democrat: what labour representation existed in the 1870s certainly shared the view that better something than nothing. The great bulk of the British people live in execrable permission either way, but doing something without that much effectat least changes attitudes. Britain's electoral public was "permissive" at the time, and it would take the serious social study of the 1890s before real efforts were made.
Disraeli was a statesman who, at home and abroad, accomplished a lot of practical good; whereas Gladstone was an idealist who's "ideals" would disgust modern people (like those of the bulk of his contemporaries, obviously: that's just the way it is) and who's prejudices were marked even for the time.
I'd have been a home-ruler, but not a particularly convinced one, and Ireland is for me a secondary issue compared to the preference for a level-headed foreign policy and my distaste for an ideological belief in laissez faire.
There is the Married Women's Property Act to Gladstone's credit, but that was going to happen eventually, whereas Bulgaria and Egypt could only happen once.
And I just prefer Dizzy the man: he overcame a disadvantageous background, he climbed the greasy pole, he was a consumate showman, he wrote books. I find plenty to admire in him.
Why does talk about his being pragmatic and ambitious like that was a bad thing?