By adopting Home Rule for Ireland as his banner, Gladstone trumped the Radical Programme, driving Chamberlain out of the party to form the Liberal Unionists.
Michael Bentley suggests that while Gladstone and the Liberal leadership was obliged to listen to the opinion of such a significant section of the party, they were able to slide along without making firm commitments and to pick and choose from the 'rag-bag' of policies that made up the Newcastle Programme, prioritising those they wanted and forgetting those they disliked.
Roy Jenkins asserts that Gladstone's only real interest now lay in Irish Home Rule, but he allowed John Morley and William Vernon Harcourt to cobble together the Newcastle Programme which he describes as 'a capacious ragbag... weak on theme'.
According to Jenkins, Gladstone had neither the time nor energy to oppose the NLF programme and decided to swallow it whole just to ensure the party remained wedded to Home Rule as its principal policy.
[4] The Liberal Party won the 1892 election, but its majority relied on Irish Nationalist support, and the results were far from the sort of endorsement from the electorate that Gladstone hoped.
[9] Of the Newcastle Programme, the government's principal achievements were employers' liability, parish councils and William Vernon Harcourt's 1894 budget, which introduced graduated death duties.
[10] When the government's efforts to bring in temperance reform and Welsh disestablishment also failed, Rosebery's disunited cabinet were almost anxious for an excuse to resign.