The first proposals for elected County Councils in Ireland were made by the Radical-Liberal Minister Joseph Chamberlain to Prime Minister Gladstone in 1885. The electorate had been enlarged by the recent Representation of the People Act 1884. However, Gladstone and Parnell preferred to legislate for Irish Home Rule first but failed to enact the 1886 Home Rule Bill. Chamberlain, briefly the President of the Local Government Board in 1886, then left the Liberals to form the Liberal Unionist Party and brought the proposal to his new Conservative allies, who won the 1886 United Kingdom general election shortly afterwards.