Why does everybody blame Grey instead of Asquith for British pre-WWI policy?

raharris1973

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After all, doesn't the buck stop with the Prime Minister on 10 Downing Street?
 
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Grey was notorious for keeping things from his superiors. Plus, he was Foreign Minister before Asquith became PM.
 

raharris1973

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July crisis and Britain's pre-war commitment to de facto alliances with Russia and France is pretty much all I was thinking of.
 
July crisis and Britain's pre-war commitment to de facto alliances with Russia and France is pretty much all I was thinking of.

In the case of France, Grey also felt the need to reassure the Cabinet that the commitment wasn't fully binding when he made it, only to tell them that actually, it might as well have been during the July Crisis. Not a very honest guy, is what I'm getting at here.
 

raharris1973

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Grey lied to the Cabinet as a whole. How straight was he with Asquith? Did Asquith delegate absolutely everything touching on diplomatic and military affairs to Grey, and attempt to provide zero oversight?
 
In the case of France, Grey also felt the need to reassure the Cabinet that the commitment wasn't fully binding when he made it, only to tell them that actually, it might as well have been during the July Crisis. Not a very honest guy, is what I'm getting at here.

But was Grey dishonest or just naive? Grey seems to have thought that he could stay out of a war as long as it was just Russia and Austria or Russia and Austria + Germany. He seems to have been completely clueless of what would happen: France couldn't let Russia be beaten and Britain could not let France be beaten. The logic of events take a long time for Grey to realize

Grey gets the flak because it was his job to run foreign policy The British cabinet isn't like the American Presidency. Cabinet ministers are responsible to the party and not to the PM Grey could do as he pleased most of the time. He just didn't know what he was getting into
 
But was Grey dishonest or just naive? Grey seems to have thought that he could stay out of a war as long as it was just Russia and Austria or Russia and Austria + Germany. He seems to have been completely clueless of what would happen: France couldn't let Russia be beaten and Britain could not let France be beaten. The logic of events take a long time for Grey to realize

I don't think he'd have been able to argue that the Entente wasn't binding without at least considering the implications if it was, though. This all may depend on what one means when asserting that Britain couldn't allow France to fall to Germany.
 
Grey gets the flak because it was his job to run foreign policy The British cabinet isn't like the American Presidency. Cabinet ministers are responsible to the party and not to the PM Grey could do as he pleased most of the time. He just didn't know what he was getting into

True in a technical sense, but some PMs have been stronger - and more hands-on - than others. Circumstances matter, too. Coalition and national governments have more complex dynamics. Stanley Baldwin wielded tighter control over his cabinet than did, say, Salisbury.

But the impression that Grey really was running the Foreign Office as something close to an independent fiefdom isn't that far offbase. That may not have made Asquith his puppet, but it does make Grey one of the most powerful foreign ministers the UK has ever had.
 
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