The Fall of Lloyd George
Robert Pearce attempts to probe the nature of the 1918-22 Coalition.
The slippery pole is hard to scale, but remarkably easy to slip down. This was certainly the experience of David Lloyd George, one of the most able and charismatic of all modern premiers. In November-December 1918 it seemed that his position was unassailable. Widely regarded as ‘the man who won the war’, he cashed in on this popularity with a ‘khaki’ election that gave him an enormous overall majority. Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law judged that he could be ‘prime minister for life if he likes’. Yet less than four yeas later, in October 1922, the Conservatives voted at the Carlton Club by a huge majority to end the coalition government. Lloyd George was thus thrown from office, and was never to return.
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