Arthur James Balfour was born into an aristocratic family in 1848 in Lothian, Scotland. He was the third child and eldest son of a Tory MP and landowner, James Maitland Balfour. He studied at Eton College and Cambridge University.

He was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Hertford in 1874. He made his name as an effective parliamentary debater, and a good tactician, if not a particularly strategic or principled thinker.

In 1895, he was promoted to President of the Local Government Board by the new Prime Minister Lord Salisbury who also happened to be Balfour’s uncle. Salisbury appointed Balfour Chief Secretary to Ireland in 1887. It has been suggested that the expression ‘Bob’s your Uncle’ was coined as an explanation for Salisbury’s political benevolence towards his nephew, though the evidence is not conclusive.

Nevertheless, Balfour proved an energetic minister, and Salisbury was pleased with his performance. In 1891, he made him Leader of the House of Commons, which was a key role for a Prime Minister sitting in the Lords. Balfour was also the last man to hold the position of First Lord of the Treasury, and to live in 10 Downing Street, when not the head of the government.

In 1892, the Liberals won the election, and Salisbury left office. Balfour returned to writing. But, in 1895, Lord Rosebery’s government fell, and Salisbury returned. Now Balfour played a vital role in the government as Salisbury’s deputy. He rallied the government during the bleakest period of the Boer War.

When Salisbury resigned in 1902, Balfour replaced him as Prime Minister. Balfour passed an important Education Act of 1902, which modernised the education system. He also secured the Entente Cordial with France in 1904. Defence reforms created the Committee of Imperial Defence, which would coordinate Britian’s military policy far more effectively. However, other than managing the day-to-day business of government, Balfour did not really have a vision for what he wanted to do with power.

In 1903, Joseph Chamberlain, the influential Liberal Unionist and Colonial Secretary, made a speech endorsing tariff reform and creating a system of imperial preference. This went against Britain’s longstanding policy of free trade, and the debate that ensued rapidly split the Conservative Party. Balfour tried to compromise.

Ultimately, Chamberlain and several other ministers resigned from Balfour’s Cabinet, leaving it weakened. In late 1905, with his efforts to unite his party having failed, Balfour resigned from the premiership. He hoped that the Liberals would fail quickly, but Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman seized the opportunity that Conservative division presented and immediately called an election in which he heavily defeated the Conservatives.

Balfour’s premiership is unusual, because it did not mark either the high point or the ending of his political career. He recovered from the defeat and continued to the lead the Conservatives in opposition. He played a key role in the 1909-11 constitutional crisis, when he tried to constrain the Liberal government’s policymaking with the Conservative dominated House of Lords, pushing the British constitution to breaking point. In this cause, he was eventually defeated and he resigned from Conservative leadership in 1911.

He then served in a variety of government posts in both coalition and Conservative governments until the end of the 1920s. He was Foreign Secretary between 1916-19, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1915-16, and Lord President of the Council from 1919-22 and then again from 1925-29. He accepted a peerage in 1922, becoming the Earl of Balfour. He died in 1930.

Balfour’s most enduring legacy was the Balfour Declaration of 1917 establishing ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in the Ottoman region of Palestine, which developed into the country of Israel. The original declaration was calibrated to compromise between existing communities, but in that respect, it failed, with enduring ramifications. There are Balfour Streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.