Lloyd George takes office 1930 or 1931

[Derek Jackson]

In OTL the second Labour government took office early in 1929. It faced the coneqences of the slump and collapsed in 1931.

In the 1929 the Liberal Party had staged a partial recovery based on We can conquer Unemployment advocating what we would call a Keynsian strategy.

Now until just before WW1 the maximum term for a Parliament was 7 years. It was shortened as part of the deal to weaken the power of the House of Lords.

WI that clause had not been in the Parliament Act. Baldwin would NOT have called elections two and a half years early (especially as he had a bad experiience with early elections in 1923.

Any elected government was going to have problems retaining power after October 1929.

I think it possible that Lloyd George would have managed to ensure that the Liberals were at least one of the two larger parties.

It is possible that the Conservatives would have been virtually excluded from Parliament in a general election between the autumn of 1930 and the end of 1931 in these circumstances.

I believe that a New Deal type programme would have worked quite well.

I think that there would have been some kind of Dominion status for India.

I think Hitler would have been more cautious faced with a stronger Britain, perhaps the same for Mussolini.

 

[Flocculencio]

Oho! A Liberal resurgence! I always like that

 

[chronos]

Yup, Lloyd-George, who had seriously thought about it, would have initiaited an all out Keynesian New Deal programme in Britain. This would have worked well when you look at the Art Deco Underground extensions, housing and factories that were achieved. It would also have meant the containment of Hitler and an alliance with Soviet Russia as L-G regarded it as the only practical solution.

 

[Yellmic Wigwawa]

Yup, Lloyd-George, who had seriously thought about it, would have initiaited an all out Keynesian New Deal programme in Britain. This would have worked well when you look at the Art Deco Underground extensions, housing and factories that were achieved. It would also have meant the containment of Hitler and an alliance with Soviet Russia as L-G regarded it as the only practical solution.

Lloyd George could have been P. M. for all of the 1930s, perhaps even up to the mid 1940s.

 

[EdT]

Nice idea, and yeah Liberal resurgences are always fun. But sadly I'm not sure if this really works.

For a start, it's going to take a hell of a lot to kick the Tories out in the interwar period- they had a lot of electoral advantages that had nothing to do with the political situation of the time. The electoral system was massively to the Conservatives' advantage, as the three-cornered nature of party politics split the centre-left vote. Ironically enough the enfranchisement of women did a lot for the Tories as well.

The only way you're going to get the Liberals in office is through a coalition- either with the Tories or Labour. Problem is, neither are going to be willing to see Lloyd George as PM. OTL the Tories were petrified of exactly the scenario you outlined happening, and would never in a million years have agreed to a revival of the coupon. The only deal they'd do with the Liberals was what happened OTL, with the Tories as overwhelmingly the dominant player in government and the surviving Liberals doomed to eventual absorbtion into the Conservative Party.

That leaves Labour- who were also petrified of a Liberal resurgence and would do anything they could to prevent it or make sure it was still-born. Look at Ramsey Mac's opposition to PR in the period- it was because he realised that only through electoral reform could the Liberals be preserved as a force in British politics. I'd be amazed if Labour would agree to any deal with the Liberals that put Lloyd George is PM, even if they were in a weakened state- they would realise that such a move would probably return the party to the pre-WW1 days of being merely a left-wing adjunct of the Liberals.

I think we either need an earlier PoD, or something different... how about this? OTL, Oswald Mosley left the Labour Party in disgust in 1930 after his proposals for radical reform on unemployment were rejected by the Party conference... in this TL let's say that he's given a more influential role in the Opposition, and is able to build up more of a powerbase beacuse of the increased parliamentary term. When the paty rejects his ideas he attempts to split Labour and walks off with more then the 6 MPs he managed OTL- let's double that, OTL more then a dozen MPs supported his plans trenchantly so that's not too unlikely. So, a successful and entrenched New Party (New Labour perhaps? ) goes into the 1931/1932 elections- after making an electoral pact with the Lloyd-George Liberals. I'm thinking Liberal/SDP Alliance sort of thing here, just two generations early. The two parties would be ideologically quite close, and with Lloyd George providing gravitas and Mosley youthful appeal it might do rather well- say 50 or 60 seats? Which still doesn't get us in government but is a considerable third force in British politics, especially if it splits the left vote enough for the Tory party to be able to remain in power, but only with considerable Alliance support...