It looks like I was wrong in saying the other night that we've never had a serving Prime Minister de-elected in the manner of John Howard - but you have to go back a long way to find one, way back before the age of party politics to the time of "continuous ministry". In 1887,Robert Stout lost his seat and the premiership on a narrow vote. As a result, he left politics for six years, during which he worked on bringing the labour movement into the progressive front which would become the Liberal Party, and was not re-elected until 1893.