[1] He entered parliament in 1826, under the title of Viscount Howick, as Whig member for Winchelsea, and then briefly for Higham Ferrers before settling for a northern constituency.

He belonged at the time to the more advanced party of colonial reformers, sharing the views of Edward Gibbon Wakefield on questions of land and emigration, and resigned in 1834 from dissatisfaction that slave emancipation was made gradual instead of immediate.

In 1835 he entered Lord Melbourne's cabinet as Secretary at War, and effected some valuable administrative reforms, especially by suppressing malpractices detrimental to the troops in India.

[4][5] During the exile of the Liberals from power he went still farther on the path of free trade, and anticipated Lord John Russell's declaration against the corn laws.

He was the first minister to proclaim that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and not for the mother countries; the first systematically to accord them self-government so far as then seemed possible; the first to introduce free trade into their relations with Great Britain and Ireland.

In the West Indies he suppressed, if he could not overcome, discontent; in Ceylon he put down rebellion; in New Zealand he suspended the constitution he had himself accorded, and yielded everything into the hands of Sir George Grey.

The least successful part of his administration was his treatment of the convict question at the Cape of Good Hope, which seemed an exception to his rule that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and in accordance with their own wishes, and subjected him to a humiliating defeat.

[10] In 1848 Grey was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council representing the City of Melbourne[11] despite never visiting the colony; his seat was declared vacant in 1850 due to his non-attendance.

No room was found for him in the Aberdeen ministry formed in December that year, and although during the Crimean struggle public opinion pointed to him as the fittest man as minister for war, he never again held office.