UK 1923: WI Liberals gain plurality over Lab?

What happens? (Besides Asquith becoming PM) Is there anyone who can leverage them back from on the precipice of permanent third party to governing party?
 
Asquith Redux..

This was covered in one of the counterfactual history books - I think it was the one with "President Gore" winning in 2000 on the cover.

Basically, Asquith forms a Liberal Government in January 1924 and manages to stay in power for ten years. I think it's ASB because the 1924 Cabinet is essentially the 1914 Cabinet revisited and there are cameos from WSC and Mosley.

Essentially, Lloyd George and Keynes introduce Keynesian policies early enough to ward off industrial action and the threat of the Depression - a resolved miners strike prompts a clutch of Labour MPs to switch to the Liberals and so on.

I'm far from certain that the Asquith-Lloyd George relationship would have endured long in Government and both were very much "men of the past".
 
What tends to be forgotten is that the 1923 General Election was a very close one - if the Liberals had gotten a relatively small swing against Labour then they would have had more seats. 1923 was the last chance the Liberals had to fight Labour off.
 
The following quotation is taken from the book The Age of Alignment: Electoral Politics in Britain 1922-1929 by Chris Cook, The MacMillan Press, 1975.
Conceivably. if the Liberals had become the second largest party in 1923, their subsequent history would have been very different. As it was, although the Liberals achieved a major revival, it was all to no purpose. By a strange paradox, it was this revival which, leaving the party holding the balance of power, led directly to the downfall of the party. Whether the Liberal Party could have come to terms with Labour in January 1924 is doubtful. What is clear, however, is that the party could not possibly have cleared its own path to destruction with more determination during 1924 - both in Parliament and in the constituencies.
 
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