Tag Archives: liberals

Opinion: A hundred years ago…

By Neil Hughes | Tue 26th August 2014 - 3:35 pm

1910 was a momentous year for Liberals in UK government, with a long-desired end to bitter struggles with the Conservatives over House of Lords reform arriving at a triumphant conclusion. Now a House of Lords of whatever persuasion would no longer be able to resist indefinitely progress for the vast majority of democratically drawn-up Parliamentary bills, and Asquith, Lloyd George & co could take much credit for this. Only four years later, however, the country slipped into a war, the wastage of human life caused by which remains unrivalled in the history of western and of European civilisation. What could have gone wrong?

1910 also marked the beginning of – and 1914 the near-culmination of – a slide in Liberal fortunes which within a decade of the second date would see a national institution reduced to a crowd of irrelevant backbenchers. Asquith was still leader; did he any longer have any party to follow him?

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged first world war | 9 Comments

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Recent Comments

Graham Evans
Peter Martin is absolutely right. Ordoliberal had a time in the sun in Germany but the debt break and the pursuit of balanced budgets have produced a crumbling ...
Rosemary Runswick
@Peter The "Jenkinsite" title is a bit of a weird holdover from when we were simply a Jenkins appreciation group, but people have been loud and clear so far on ...
Jack Meredith
Fantastic to see you guys doing well, congratulations! I look forward to seeing you go from strength to strength ☺️...
Peter Martin
It's odd to see "ordoliberalism" mentioned with approval (as in the link given in the OP)- especially as the calls for government to adopt a more a Keynesian ap...
Peter Davies
Perhaps the answer to Michael's comment and those of the MPs and councillors William refered to is that you redisribute at a personal or household level. That m...