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VII. Lloyd George's Premiership: A Study in ‘Prime Ministerial Government’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Kenneth O. Morgan
Kenneth O. Morgan
Affiliation:
The Queen's College, Oxford
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Extract

‘The Power of the Man in the Saddle’: this was the burden of the Liberal chief whip's advice to David Lloyd George in April 1918. But the Prime Minister hardly needed any instruction in this theme: the uses and the limitations of power formed his absorbing passion. Even at the time many felt that his period as prime minister had marked a totally new departure in British politics. Some later commentators (most recently Mr Humphry Berkeley) have even claimed to detect the dawn of a new political era between 1916 and 1922, one in which ‘prime ministerial government’ gradually took the place of conventional cabinet government. But, despite their certainty, the precise character of Lloyd's George premiership, like the man himself, is still shrouded in mystery. Was it rule by a dictator or by a democrat? Did any consistent principle animate the ‘man in the saddle’ or was it all opportunism gone berserk ? Was Wales's Great Commoner really ‘rooted in nothing’, as Keynes was to allege? Not even Lloyd George's closest associates, Kerr and Riddell, felt able to say with any assurance. They were as baffled as the rest. Lloyd George was suddenly thrust from office in October 1922 with the issue still inconclusive. Ever since then the debate about his premiership has been passionate and unremitting. Each observer seems to have seen a different prime minister, one created in his own image. Fifty biographies on, the essential Lloyd George remains as elusive as ever. He remains the most controversial and contradictory of political animals, ‘the Big Beast’, the rogue elephant of twentieth-century prime ministers.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 1970 , pp. 130 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

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