Several Liberal Democrats have taken to twitter expressing their anticipation, such as Jo Swinson:

reserving a seat to watch a little bit of Lib Dem history later today - Nick Clegg taking #pmqs, first Lib leader to do so since 1922

Others have also made reference to Nick Clegg being the first Liberal (Democrat) leader to take PMQs since Lloyd George. However, as Hopi Sen has pointed out the history of PMQs is a little more complicated than this:

I appeal to @markpack on behalf of history nerds. Asquith last Liberal _leader_ to take Qs. Also PMQ's began in '61 so no-one did em in 22

So what is the actual situation?

First, in 1922 Lloyd George was Prime Minister, but as head of a coalition government, with Asquith still leader of the Liberal Party. So strictly speaking Nick Clegg won't be the first Liberal (Democrat) leader since 1922 to answer Prime Minster questions.

Second, Prime Minister's Questions in their modern form did indeed start in 1961. However, they were around in a different form prior to that, as the House of Commons Library explains:

Before the 1880s questions to the Prime Minister were treated no differently from questions to other Ministers.

Until then questions were asked of ministers, without notice, on days on which ministers were present (usually Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays), in whatever order Members rose to ask them. Public business could not commence until all questions had been answered. Changes were made in 1881 that affected questions to the Prime Minister, "when as a courtesy to Mr Gladstone, then aged 72, questions to the prime minister were placed last on the day's list to allow him to come in late".

So although the phrase "Prime Minister's Questions" was not used by contemporaries in the way it is now, it is a reasonable simplification (especially within the 140 character confines of a tweet!) to use it to describe the pre-1961 situation when Prime Ministers answered questions.

But whatever the terminology, today will see a historic event the likes of which last occurred a long time ago.

UPDATE: Lloyd George missed the on 4 August 1922, which turned out to be the last occasion before the coalition government fell, as he was absent from Parliament. Therefore the last questions he answered as Prime Minister were those on 3 August, including this admirably brief and precise exchange:

Mr. MALONE asked the Prime Minister whether he has any information to give the House as to whether the Greek Army has continued to advance on Constantinople since the Allied Notes were addressed to the Greek Government; and whether, in view of the serious consequences which a Greek occupation of Constantinople would have, he will give the House an assurance that the Government will take measures to prevent the Greeks from occupying Constantinople while Parliament is in Recess?

The PRIME MINISTER The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative, and to the second part in the affirmative.

The last exchanges were about the League of Nations:

The PRIME MINISTER The names of the representatives of the British Government at the meeting of the League of Nations at Geneva are my Noble Friend the Lord President of the Council, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Education, and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Lieut.-Colonel J. Ward).

Lord R. CECIL Can the right hon. Gentleman reply to the last part of my question, as to whether he himself will be able to attend at any part of the proceedings? Does he realise that it will be quite possible for him to go only for two or three days, and to deliver a speech on disarmament or some other question of great international importance.

The PRIME MINISTER There I am leaving myself in the hands of the representatives of the Government. The same suggestion was put to me by them, and I am leaving myself in their hands and shall wait their further suggestion.

Mr. GRITTEN Is it not more necessary for the right hon. Gentleman to remain in this distressful country?

Viscountess ASTOR Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether a woman will be sent in an advisory capacity?

The PRIME MINISTER That was also considered by the Government, and it has been decided that that shall he done.

Cross-posted from the Mandate blog

Many in the Lib Dems perceive Labour as having a rather arrogant or manipulative approach where cross-party cooperation really means "you must agree with Labour". Hence, for example, John Prescott's condemnation of John Hutton as a collaborator for working with the current government, despite both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair having invited those of other parties to work with their governments. Cross-party working is ok when it's a Labour Prime Minister but not when it isn't, it would seem.

The lazy silliness verging on arrogance with which many in Labour deliberately get the party's name wrong, using Liberal rather than Liberal Democrat, except when they desperately want something, when Liberal Democrat suddenly comes back in to use, is a trivial but totemic example that many Liberal Democrats cite. Witness Gordon Brown's vocabulary switching after general election polling day.

It also has substantive historic roots because,  as Sunder's post suggests, Kier Haride in one respect was in the Ramsay MacDonald mould - both were willing to work with the Liberals as they then were when it suited them, but also willing to sharply drop their support too, based on whatever would seem to give Labour the most long term advantage.

In itself that is not unreasonable behaviour, but it does feed into that sense of 'you can't trust them can you?' which any cross-party cooperation has to find a way to tackle. The current coalition has in its favour both the arithmetic of the Commons and also the desire of David Cameron to move his party more towards the Liberal Democrats and away from his right-wing; both provide currently compelling reasons to overcome those doubts. Any future Lib Dem / Labour cooperation would need similar strong factors but it will be an early sign of how serious Labour is thinking about such a future if we see attempts to leave behind that historical mistrust or attempts to talk it up.

I refer, of course, to the son of the Duke of Wellington speaking in 1852; a handy reminder that questions of new media intruding into previously private information is not such a new question.

Cross-posted from the Mandate blog

The database on this website has not been edited. It therefore includes assets which were repaid in the 1950s.

In other words, someone actually sat down to create a website that contained information that was already several decades out of date. Though perhaps someone knows more about this process and why that was done?

What an amazing person - and a shame that people like him get so little mention compared to many of what passes for celebrities in the media.

Biagini highlighted the contradiction at the heart of Gladstone’s reputation: both being seen as a quintessential Victorian, more Victorian than Queen Victoria, but also someone who has continued to be sufficiently revered by the National Liberal Club for its premises, where he was speaking, to be decorated with paintings and statues of the man. He was both a man of his times and a hero for our times.

Gladstone’s political legacy has variously been claimed by people across the political spectrum. Although neither speaker directly made this point, this is perhaps unsurprisingly for a politician who predated the modern party system and was a member at different times of the Conservatives, a centrist group (the Peelites) and then also the Liberals.

Biagini highlighted two of these claims in particular – that of the Keith Joseph Conservatives, appropriating his economic liberalism, and that of the Economist, labelling him a prophet of the left – a progressive free of class – in a 1992 editorial.

His own explanation of the eclectic appeal of Gladstone’s legacy is that a man prominent in politics for over 60 years, and who reshaped a party during that time (the Liberals), is bound to leave behind a wide choice of actions and beliefs for different people to pick and choose from.

In particular, Gladstone mixed a belief in free trade and laissez faire economic policies with, over the years, an increasing support for new forms of regulation as required by the country's swift social change – a mix which cuts across conventional left/right dividing lines but sits comfortably with many modern Liberals and then Liberal Democrats.

Both Biagini and Huhne picked out Gladstone’s willingness to nationalise the railways – putting a provision for this into railways legislation – as an example of his willingness to be pragmatic when it came to laissez faire beliefs. He did not nationalise the railways – but wanted powers to do so as he could envisage circumstances in which that would be the right thing to do.

This was not a one-off aberration. Gladstone did nationalise the telegraph system and was fully in tune with the increasing municipalisation (nationalisation at a local level) of gas and water supplies.

As Biagini put it, Gladstone gave the needs of people priority over ideology and economic dogma. He was willing to tackle natural monopolies with government intervention and to provide public goods via the state.

In addition to echoing these views, Huhne emphasised the two phases in Gladstone’s career as Chancellor and Prime Minister when it came to national debt. Gladstone initially halved the public debt to GDP ratio – dealing with the huge debt left over from the Napoleonic wars. But then in the second half of his career Gladstone instead emphasised spending on social causes, with the debt ratio staying largely static.

This reversal of Gordon Brown’s record – who spent first and is now worrying about cutting debt – reflected the increasing demands for the state to respond to the social strains and challenges of the industrial revolution as the nineteenth century progressed.

The Gladstone who initially sought out to abolish income tax was by the end sufficiently keen on spending in areas such as education that Huhne even argued the New Liberals  were not a radical departure from his policies.

As he aged, Gladstone left behind his initial near obsession with thrift – well illustrated by Huhne’s recount of how Gladstone had bemoaned the Foreign Office’s use of thick sheets of notepaper instead of thinner paper. But through his career Gladstone retained an interest in transparency and control over spending. Gladstone may have become keen on spending, but he was not slapdash with it and the financial controls he introduced, such as the Public Accounts Committee and the Auditor General, still heavily shape our contemporary systems.

Gladstone’s emphasis, by the end, on wise public spending is not the only respect in which his policies sit comfortably with Liberal Democrats. Both Biagini and Huhne spoke of how Gladstone’s emphasis on humanitarian concerns in foreign policy are echoed by the more modern concerns such as those of Paddy Ashdown  over the Balkans. Huhne also noted that William Gladstone was first western statesman to willingly take part in decolonisation – the Ionian Islands.

The application of moral principles and the international rule of law to matters of foreign policy, as pioneered by Gladstone, has been repeatedly followed by his successors as party leader. So too, Biagini pointed out, have Gladstone’s emphasis in foreign affairs on working with other countries and appreciating the European context.

Huhne agreed and extended the point by reminding the audience that all three parts of Gladstone’s famous trio – peace, retrenchment and reform – were still very applicable to the party’s approach. Having already talked about peace and retrenchment, Huhne pointed out that Gladstone was a keen reformer of the political system. His strident belief in devolution was married to major work to introduce a politically impartial civil service, changes to the electoral system and more.

During questions from the audience, it was pointed out (by William Wallace) that even the new Supreme Court being brought into existence at the moment was originally proposed in the Supreme Court Act of 1873, a measure which was then stymied by the fall of the government.

Both Huhne and Biagini concluded that the overall shape of Gladstone’s policies – economic responsibility married with willingness to mend market failures, concern for social reform, a humanitarian foreign policy and political reform all were followed by subsequent party leaders, right through to the present.

How could I resist the opportunity to read an 82 page book, published in 2000, in order to discover why there might be a cover-up?

Llandudno has a plaque - unveiled in 1933 by David Lloyd George no less - which states, "On this very shore during happy rambles with little Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll was inspired to write that literary treasure Alice in Wonderland which has now charmed children for generations". This was part of a deliberate attempt to attract more tourism via having a famous author associated with the town. But is any part of this tale true?

The book gets off to an entertainingly circular start (and one with echoes of the internet) when the author, Michael Senior, points out that one of the first sources he looked at to discover the truth turned out to cite ... himself. This statement on the plaque is dismissed as being unequivocally false, with the book known to have been inspired by tales told on river trips elsewhere.

Did Lewis Carroll visit Llandudno? is a neat mini-case study in just how hard it can be to track down the truth - or at least a fully documented plausible version of the truth - and how easy it is to stop at earlier points were apparently authoritative statements have been made which, under close examination, melt away, as in the case of one key letter:

It turns out that not only does nobody know where it is but that none of the people who quote from it so assertively have ever seen it.

Peeling back through history, we find a round of destruction of evidence that would show whether or not Lewis Carroll visited, followed latter by a round of invention of evidence to justify the desire to cash in on the tourism benefits of a connection. In the end the truth is far from clear as to what really happened.

You too can enjoy this historical mystery by buying Did Lewis Carroll visit Llandudno? from Amazon.

The answer is around £85,000.

Although this figure is very high by current standards, national expenditure was much lower. The 1906 Liberal election campaign centrally cost around £8.5 million in current money and, most impressively, raised so much money that it made a profit equivalent to around £15 million.