Sverdrup and his colleagues and diminishing group in the Storting were more or less expelled from the party and had to start their own Venstre. The original party, now led by Sverdrup's leading opponents, Ullmann and Steen, voted against him and mocked the elder statesman for clinging to the "Chair", but he was saved by Høyre which had no intentions to diminish the strife within the Venstre, and believed that their best hope was to leave the Sverdrup ministry in peace until the general elections in 1888. After those elections, which proved fully that Høyre strategy had been a sound one, Sverdrup's ministry was quickly ousted.