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AbstractOn 7 December 1916, in a dramatic coup, Lloyd George supplanted Asquith and became prime minister. This marked the death of a great party and has generated huge controversy. For long, Lloyd George was condemned as the culprit but latterly his reputation has risen sharply. Asquith and Lloyd George came from very different wings of the party, imperialist and Little Englander. Asquith seemed the supreme insider, Lloyd George a supreme Welsh outsider. However in peacetime government, they formed a tremendous partnership. Their close association continued to the formation of the first coalition in May 1915. Then serious division came over military conscription, with Lloyd George moving towards his old foes, the Unionists. As minister for munitions, then secretary for war, he became publicly very critical of the conduct of the war. A great conflict arose over his demand for a new war committee. This was directed against the generals: he did not wish to become prime minister. It looked as if a compromise was possible. On 3 December 1916 Asquith agreed to such a committee but, fatally, reversed his view the next day, Crucial was his misjudgment of the Unionist leaders, especially Balfour. On 6 December the king asked Lloyd George to form a government. Asquith seriously exaggerated his own strength while Lloyd George now had growing Unionist support, the backing of Labour and of a majority of Liberal MPs mobilised by Addison. So Asquith fell and a governmental revolution followed – a new small war cabinet, a cabinet secretariat under Hankey, a secretariat of private advisors in the 'Garden Suburb' and an inexorable move towards prime ministerial (or quasi‐presidential) government. In May 1918, the 'Maurice debate' saw the Liberals divided into pro‐ and anti‐government factions; they were crushed at the subsequent general election. The party was thereafter haunted by December 1916 and responsibility was bitterly contested. Yet it should be remembered that before 7 December 1916, the two Liberal leaders formed a dynamic and commanding partnership, which changed British politics profoundly and irreversibly.

AbstractAttempts at a Labour–Liberal Democrat Progressive Alliance came to nothing prior to the 1997 general election. The original idea of progressivism, first mooted in Britain in 1896, was an American one. Suggestions for a progressive alliance in the UK came from Lloyd George in 1914, and then again in 1931, each time with little effect. Nothing emerged after 1945 until the Lib–Lab pact negotiated by Callaghan and Steel in 1977, which led to electoral misfortune for both and the rise and fall of the SDP. In 2010 a coalition between the Lib Dems (under Clegg) and the Conservatives was always much the more likely option. Most Labour people no longer saw the Lib Dems as a party of the left. The Coalition Agreement in 2010 showed the idea of an alliance to be a centrist, elitist one with little grass‐roots support. Such an alliance would flourish through abstract pressure groups rather than popular democracy, especially with a Labour party led by Corbyn. In the US and the UK, progressivism went badly wrong in its politics: Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalist campaign of 1912 divided American reformers fatally, as did Lloyd George's postwar Coalition in Britain after 1918. Now, even after Brexit, a progressive alliance seems further away than ever. The story of the 'Progressive Dilemma' remains one of unrealistic projects, invariably disappointed.

AbstractNineteenth‐century constitutional reformers focussed on parliament. Their central idea was citizenship, modelled variously on the democracy of ancient Athens, small communities like Switzerland, and especially the United States, a particular inspiration for Gladstone who admired its constitution. The 1911 Parliament Act marked the final triumph of the Victorian Liberals legacy, with a very different impetus coming from Lloyd George during his coalition. Labour focussed on class, not the constitution, though the ILP favoured localism and devolution, before succumbing to a centralising unionism. Tawney championed the idea of social citizenship, emphasising activism and education. After 1945, Labour did not prioritize constitutional reform until the dramatic changes that came after 1997. Gordon Brown then revived the notion of citizenship, and possible codification, in pursuing the values of Britishness. Labour's legacy was a confusing one. But Ed Miliband's policy revision could reclaim the idea of citizenship, an egalitarian concept to counter the inequalities of class.

Kenneth O. Morgan pays tribute to veteran Labour politician Michael Foot, who died in March 2010

In its centenary year, Kenneth O. Morgan, explains the profound significance of Lloyd George's People's Budget for our political, social and economic history