Robert Stevenson Horne, 1st Viscount Horne

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Half Measures
Sir Robert Horne, President of the Board of Trade, and Sir Eric Geddes, Minister of Transport (speaking together). "That's a rummy get-up. But perhaps he couldn't afford anything better."

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Cartoon from Punch magazine, 7 July 1920, referring to a bill introduced by Horne (left) concerned with state control of mining, which was similar to an anticipated bill from Geddes (right) concerned with the railways

Robert Stevenson Horne, 1st Viscount Horne GBE (28 February 1871 – 3 September 1940) was a businessman and Scottish Unionist politician.

Horne was a director of the Suez Canal Company, chairman of the Great Western Railway Company and director of several other companies and banks. He was Examiner in Philosophy and Lord Rector at the University of Aberdeen and a member of the Faculty of Advocates. In 1910 he became a KC, and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in each of the two General Elections of that year.

During the First World War Horne worked as an assistant to the railway chief Eric Geddes, and was granted the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel. Horne was elected as Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead in 1918.

He served as Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Labour, President of the Board of Trade and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lloyd George after the First World War.

When the Lloyd George Coalition Government fell in 1922, Horne refused to join the new government of Andrew Bonar Law. Two years later Stanley Baldwin offered to make Horne Minister of Labour once more, but Horne declined, preferring to concentrate on work in the City. Although he remained a Member of Parliament until 1937, he never again held ministerial office.

Horne, a womanising bachelor, was famously referred to by Baldwin as a "Scots cad", a remark that has stuck.

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