from a firmly Gladstonian perspective and showed a marked antipathy to the philosophy and policies of British Conservatism". Chamberlain often expressed his disgust with Disraeli, "the man whom he blamed in large measure for the injection of selfish class interest and jingoism into British public life in the next decades".

An early sign of his antisemitism came in 1881 when he described the landlords in Ireland affected by the Land Bill as "blood-sucking