4 - The Truth About Lloyd George

Summary

It has long been a puzzle to reconcile two well-known facts: first that the Economic Consequences became the received version on the left for a contemptuous view of Lloyd George; second, that Keynes came to cooperate so closely with Lloyd George in seeking to revive the Liberal party in the 1920s. Their own relationship had begun during the First World War, when Keynes was first drawn into advising the Treasury on key policy issues from 1914. It was in these years that Keynes benefited from the sponsorship of Edwin Montagu, a key minister in the Liberal government. This chapter shows how much Lloyd George’s initial hostility to Keynes on economic policy was the product of a cultural clash between them; also how this came to be resolved (at least temporarily) when Keynes picked up economic insights from Lloyd George’s untutored intuitions. And the chapter draws on the memoir ‘Dr Melchior’, composed by Keynes for his Bloomsbury friends, to illustrate the way that – almost against his own prejudices – he became captivated by Lloyd George’s intuitive mastery of the political process.