Archive for david lloyd george

Lloyd George is (still) on YouTube

5 December 2011
Reviving and updating a list I put together a little while back about David Lloyd George, here are some of the former Liberal Prime Minister’s appearances courtesy of YouTube: Lloyd George visits Chequers – a silent movie, like the others (and therefore perfect for those who, shock horror, browse the internet whilst at work) David [...]
House of Lords Reform Draft Bill

The concessions behind the 1911 Parliament Act

Last summer a parliamentary question by Lord Hylton flushed out the huge volume of legislation passed by Parliament since 1997 but never actually brought into force. However, these are but the young upstarts in the list of things Parliament has said it would be but has never quite got round to. The grandfather of them all [...]

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Herbert Fisher

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures [...]

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Charles Masterman

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures [...]

The history of Prime Minister's Questions

21 July 2010 , , , ,
Today sees Nick Clegg take to the Despatch Box to answer Prime Minister’s Questions in David Cameron’s absence from the UK. 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 [...]

Did Lewis Carrol visit Llandudno?

17 January 2010 , ,
I was surprised to discover this was a question people worried over. More surprised to discover someone had written a book about it. Even more surprised to discover that in fact it has been an issue of “long and plentiful” debate which “has never been entirely resolved”. And then intrigued to discover, “the evidence is [...]

A Delicate Balance: the history of Liberals and hung Parliaments

The Liberal Democrat History Group meeting at Bournemouth Conference, supported by The Guardian, looked at hung Parliaments. In his introduction, the meeting chair Duncan Brack explained that one reason for picking the topic is that work such as that by John Curtice has shown that the odds of the next general election producing a hung [...]

The 1906 election

In 2006 I gave a talk at a dinner to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1906 Liberal landslide election victory. These are the notes I spoke from. Imagine you are Prime Minster, with a majority of 130 (and in practice a majority of more like 350 on most issues given how small the main [...]