But the defeat of the Budget in November 1909 immediately opened a line of attack wholly unconnected with Ireland, and over the most favourable ground that could have been selected for the assault.
Nothing could have been more skilful than the tactics employed by the Liberal leaders.

Concentrating on the constitutional question raised by the alleged encroachment of the Lords on the exclusive privilege of the Commons to grant supply, they tried to excite a hurricane of popular fury by calling on the electorate to decide between "Peers and People." The rejected Finance Bill was dubbed "The People's Budget." A "Budget League" was formed to expatiate through the constituencies on the democratic character of its provisions, and on the personal and class selfishness of the Peers in throwing it out.

As little as possible was said about Ireland, and probably not one voter in ten thousand who went to the poll in January 1910 ever gave a thought to the subject, or dreamed that he was taking part in reversing the popular verdict of 1886 and 1895.

Afterwards, when it was complained that an election so conducted had provided no "mandate" for Home Rule, it was found that in the course of a long speech delivered by Mr.Asquith at the Albert Hall on the 10th of December there was a sentence in which the Prime Minister had declared that "the Irish problem could only be solved by a policy which, while explicitly safeguarding the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament, would set up self-government in Ireland in regard to Irish affairs." The rest of the speech dealt with Tariff Reform and with the constitutional question of the House of Lords, on which the public mind was focused throughout the election.
In the unprecedented deluge of oratory that flooded the country in the month preceding the elections the Prime Minister's sentence on Ireland at the Albert Hall passed almost unnoticed in English and Scottish constituencies, or was quickly lost sight of, like a coin in a cornstack, under sheaves of rhetoric about the dear loaf and the intolerable arrogance of hereditary legislators.

Here and there a Unionist candidate did his best to warn a constituency that every Liberal vote was a vote for Home Rule.