This shift was best exemplified by the Liberal government of Herbert Henry Asquith and his Chancellor David Lloyd George, whose Liberal reforms in the early 1900s created a basic welfare state.

David Lloyd George adopted a programme at the 1929 general election entitled We Can Conquer Unemployment !, although by this stage the Liberals had declined to third-party status.

Quickly rising to prominence among the Pro-Boers was David Lloyd George, a relatively new MP and a master of rhetoric, who took advantage of having a national stage to speak out on a controversial issue to make his name in the party.

Although he presided over a large majority, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably Herbert Henry Asquith at the Exchequer, Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade.

Lloyd George succeeded Asquith at the Exchequer, and was in turn succeeded at the Board of Trade by Winston Churchill, a recent defector from the Conservatives.

This coalition fell apart at the end of 1916, when the Conservatives withdrew their support from Asquith and gave it to Lloyd George instead, who became Prime Minister at the head of a coalition government largely made up of Conservatives.

David Lloyd George

In the 1918 general election Lloyd George, " the Man Who Won the War ", led his coalition into another khaki election, and won a sweeping victory over the Asquithian Liberals and the newly emerging Labour Party.

Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates – this " coupon " as it became known was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself.

Lloyd George still claimed to be leading a Liberal government, but he was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party.

In 1922 the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing in particular the Chanak Crisis over Turkey and Lloyd George's corrupt sale of honours amongst other grievances, and Lloyd George was forced to resign.

Asquith died in 1928 and the enigmatic figure of Lloyd George returned to the leadership and began a drive to produce coherent policies on many key issues of the day.

Lloyd George offered a degree of support to the Labour government in the hope of winning concessions, including a degree of electoral reform to introduce the alternative vote, but this support was to prove bitterly divisive as the Liberals increasingly divided between those seeking to gain what Liberal goals they could achieve, those who preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one and vice-versa.

Lloyd George himself was ill and did not actually join.

From the outside, Lloyd George called for the party to abandon the government completely in defence of free trade, but only a few MPs and candidates followed.

In the 1935 general election, just 17 Liberal MPs were elected, along with Lloyd George and three followers as " independent Liberals ".

Immediately after the election the two groups reunited, though Lloyd George declined to play much of a formal role in his old party.

In 1957 this total fell to five when one of the Liberal MPs died and the subsequent by-election was lost to the Labour Party, which selected the former Liberal Deputy Leader Lady Megan Lloyd George as its own candidate.

* David Lloyd George 1926 – 1931

* Megan Lloyd George 1949 – 1951

** David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer

* Lloyd George and the honours scandal.

* John Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition.

* 1906 – Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet ( which included amongst its members H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill ) embarks on sweeping social reforms after a Liberal landslide in the British general election.

Several 20th century Prime Ministers, such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, were famous for their oratorical skills.

( Asquith makes the announcement while David Lloyd George holds down a jubilant Winston Churchill.

Examples include William Ewart Gladstone, David Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair.

This support came from the British press in the form of Viscount Astor, Lord Beaverbrook and former WW1 Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who were trenchant critics of the autocratic style of Winston Churchill and favoured replacing Winston with Menzies.

Prime Ministers from 1900 to 1945: Marquess of Salisbury, Arthur Balfour, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Henry Asquith, David Lloyd George, Andrew Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill.

It was given in 1916 to Andrew Bonar Law, and when he declined, to David Lloyd George and in 1940 to Winston Churchill.

The King was displeased at Liberal attacks on the peers, including Lloyd George's Limehouse speech and Churchill's public demand for a general election ( for which Asquith apologised to the King's adviser Lord Knollys and rebuked Churchill at a Cabinet meeting ).

In perhaps the last important parliamentary intervention of his career, which occurred during the crucial Norway Debate of May 1940, Lloyd George made a powerful speech that helped to undermine Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister and to pave the way for the ascendancy of Churchill as Premier.

Churchill offered Lloyd George a place in his Cabinet but he refused, citing his dislike of Chamberlain.

A pessimistic speech by Lloyd George on 7 May 1941 led Churchill to compare him with Philippe Pétain.

" Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Churchill.

" However, in the 1930s other British politicians including Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George also made favourable comments about fascist leaders.

Carr was convinced that the Bolsheviks were destined to win the Russian Civil War, and approved of the Prime Minister David Lloyd George's opposition to the anti-Bolshevik ideas of the War Secretary Winston Churchill under the grounds of realpolitik.

His targets included the Conservative Winston Churchill and the Liberal David Lloyd George, as well as Ramsay MacDonald and Margaret Bondfield from his own Labour party ( he targeted the latter for her unwillingness to increase unemployment benefits ).

The Asquith government became involved in an expensive naval arms race with the German Empire and began an extensive social welfare programme ( See Liberal reforms ), spearheaded by David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and-at this stage-Winston Churchill who at the Board of Trade had passed measures against sweatshop conditions.

The eisteddfod itself took place on the old Vicarage Field at Fronhyfyd and was visited by David Lloyd George, accompanied by Winston Churchill.

When Churchill returned to government as Minister of Munitions in 1916, Marsh joined him there as Private Secretary and worked in that position, through successive departments, until the fall of David Lloyd George's Coalition Government in 1922.

This centralisation inevitably enhanced the power of the Prime Minister, who moved from being the primus inter pares of the Asquith Cabinets of 1906 onwards, with a glittering set of huge individual talents leading powerful departments, to the dominating figures of David Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill.

The Prime Minister thought him overly pompous and self-important, and it was said that he used him as if he were using a Rolls-Royce to deliver a parcel to the station ; Lloyd George said much later that Churchill treated his Ministers in a way that Lloyd George would never have treated his: " They were all men of substance — well, except Curzon.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill became aware of the possible use of Weizmann's discovery in early 1915, and Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George joined Churchill in encouraging Weizmann's development of the process.