Yep. And I actually came across an article which stated that the Liberals already began to curb capital export by 1914, just before ww1.
No, 1914 Churchill was essentially an American Cold War Liberal rather than a free-trade Tory.
The issue of conscription wrecked the Liberals as much as slavery destroyed the Whig (US). It would be avoided without a total war.
Thank you, I will have to reevaluate Mr. Churchill. Now that would set in motion a very different UK. If the BEF is given a more limited scope in the war and other theaters are not developed I could find the need for conscription avoided, but I think such a war ends without an Entente victory, more likely a stalemate or even modest CP victory.
In my own tinkering with the Great War, leaving Germany weakened but intact, the undefeated rather than vanquished or victorious, I have two roads forward to choose, one that leaves the UK out of the war or one where the UK enters later. My best guess is that the 1915 election brings a Tory PM and government but no majority so any entry to war still looks like a "unity" government as the Liberals built with the Tories. As I understand it the Liberals were divided within over going to war, only the clear belligerency of Germany brought the "pacifist" faction to maintain unity, as an out of power and coalition party that divide might not need close. Thus it would seem that if the war remains limited to the continental powers then the Liberals are in position to take up power somewhere after the war with an agenda that prepares the UK to remain a peer or near peer power into the modern era. In the event that the UK goes to war under a Tory government the Liberals can remain distinct enough to remain a major party in future and if Labour strengthens that should push the Liberals to absorb more Tories and cause a rightward shift of its policy. At bottom I think a war that ends without a victory nearly destroys the party in power as the arguable victory mortally wounded the Liberals. Therefore my thinking would be that Churchill has a good chance to be unpopular within the party but the most likely Liberal to bridge its wider wings in some later 1930s or early 1940s election and government.
Without bogging down this thread with gross details, would a surviving Imperial Germany that by the 1930s is beginning to reassert herself as the proto-continental super power and still globally aspiring great power, likely with a colonial empire retained, give Churchill relevance as a hawkish Liberal? I would imagine Churchill might steer reactionary, defend British imperialism and promote military spending, but does he retain enough confidence and supporters to become PM?