LLOYD GEORGE AND THE ELECTORAL DECLINE OF THE BRITISH LIBERAL PARTY IN THE 1920s

Abstract

This article reassesses the electoral decline of British Liberalism in the 1920s, especially the catastrophic defeat of 1924. A leading explanation for this disaster is that the Liberals were ‘fighting to lose’ by leaving nearly 250 constituencies uncontested. David Lloyd George is widely seen as deliberately seeking to destroy his party by refusing to finance candidates through his infamous ‘fund’, so he could lead what remained after electoral evisceration. His actions are widely credited with stymieing prospects of a Liberal recovery in the next election, 1929, which confirmed the party's permanent replacement by Labour. Through a wide-ranging statistical reanalysis, supported by a study of grassroots constituency campaigns, this article argues that the lack of candidates was a negligible contributor either to Liberal annihilation in 1924, or to Liberal failure to recover in 1929. The sharply deteriorating health of the party was already felt keenly at the grassroots before, not after, the seemingly freak result of 1924 was known. We thus argue that, contrary to the judgement of historians and contemporaries, the 1924 result represented the truer reflection of the party's fundamental interwar strength, with 1923 the exception. The inaction of Lloyd George in 1924 thus can be interpreted as pragmatic rather than Machiavellian.