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.

Asquith, Edward Grey, and Richard Burdon Haldane forming a clique dubbed the " Liberal Imperialists " that supported the government in the prosecution of the war.

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.

But instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense.

* 1915 – The last British Liberal Party government ( led by Herbert Henry Asquith ) falls.

This led to the Shell Crisis of 1915 which brought down both the Liberal government and Premiership of H. H. Asquith.

The Asquith government proved ineffective but when David Lloyd George replaced him in December 1916 Britain gained a powerful and successful wartime leader.

Speaking in November 1920 Asquith quoted Gladstone to show " the only way to escape from the financial morass towards which the government are heading ".

* May 17 – The last purely Liberal government in the United Kingdom ends when Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith forms an all party coalition.

In the last year of his life, Edward became embroiled in a constitutional crisis when the Conservative majority in the House of Lords refused to pass the " People's Budget " proposed by the Liberal government of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith.

During the election campaign Lloyd George talked of " guarantees " and Asquith of " safeguards " that would be necessary before forming another Liberal government, but the King informed Asquith that he would not be willing to contemplate creating peers ( to give the Liberals a majority in the Lords ) until after a second general election.

The fall of Asquith as Prime Minister split the Liberal Party into two factions: those who supported him and those who supported the coalition government.

) That failure, combined with the Shell Crisis of 1915 – amidst press publicity engineered by Sir John French – dealt Kitchener's political reputation a heavy blow ; Kitchener was popular with the public, so Asquith retained him in office in the new coalition government, but responsibility for munitions was moved to a new ministry headed by David Lloyd George.

After the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour fell in December 1905 there was some speculation that Asquith and his allies Richard Haldane and Sir Edward Grey would refuse to serve unless Campbell-Bannerman accepted a peerage, which would have left Asquith as the real leader in the House of Commons.

During the election campaign Lloyd George talked of “ guarantees ” and Asquith ( in his Albert Hall Speech, December 1909 ) of “ safeguards ” which would be necessary before forming another Liberal government, but in fact the King informed Asquith that he would not even be willing to contemplate creating peers until after a second General Election.

In 1915 Asquith was forced to shore up his government with a number of pro-suffrage Conservatives in a coalition government, and when Lloyd George took over from Asquith the following year it paved the way for the extension of the vote in 1918.

Asquith headed the Liberal government going into the war.

Following a Cabinet split on 25 May 1915, caused by the Shell Crisis ( or sometimes dubbed ' The Great Shell Shortage ') and the failed offensive at the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli, Asquith became head of a new coalition government, bringing senior figures from the Opposition into the Cabinet.

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.

Asquith was forced out in December 1916, with the war still raging and almost two years from its end, and Lloyd George became Prime Minister, with the nation demanding he take charge of the war in vigorous fashion.

It set up a panel including Michael Balcon, Antony Asquith, John Grierson, Harry Watt and Arthur Elston, which became a committee of sponsorship and distribution.

He was known as H. H. Asquith until his elevation to the peerage ( 1925 ), when he became Lord Oxford.

However, the plot ( called the " Relugas Compact " after the Scottish lodge where the men met ) collapsed when Asquith agreed to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Campbell-Bannerman ( Grey became Foreign Secretary and Haldane Secretary of State for War ).

Towards the end of his life, Asquith became a wheelchair user after suffering a stroke.

His only daughter by his first wife, Violet ( later Violet Bonham Carter ), became a well-regarded writer and a life peeress ( as Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury in her own right ).

His fourth son Sir Cyril, Baron Asquith of Bishopstone ( 1890 – 1954 ) became a Law Lord.

When Churchill left government for the first time in 1915, Marsh became Assistant Private Secretary to Prime Minister Henry Asquith, in which position he would serve until the fall of Asquith's government in December, 1916.

Besides the two Conservative factions, the Labour Party were fighting as a major national party for the first time and indeed became the main Opposition after the election ; the Liberals were still split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions, with many Lloyd George Liberals still unopposed by Conservative candidates ( including Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless ).

Suffragettes posed in front of the door when they petitioned Herbert Asquith for women's rights in 1913, a picture that became famous and was circulated around the world.

In 1915 Selborne returned to government during the First World War when he became President of the Board of Agriculture in the war time coalition of Liberal prime minister H. H. Asquith.

In 1916, David Lloyd George forced Asquith to resign and became Prime Minister.

Its members included: Lady Diana Manners, the most famous beauty in England ; Duff Cooper who became a Conservative politician and a diplomat ; Raymond Asquith, son of the Prime Minister and a famed barrister ; Maurice Baring ; Patrick Shaw-Stewart, a managing director of Barings Bank and war poet ; Nancy Cunard and her friend Iris Tree ; Edward Horner and Sir Denis Anson.

He received praise for his administrative policy and for refusing to adopt some of the extreme proposals of the Labour Party, and was retained in the government after H. H. Asquith became Prime Minister in 1908.

Anthony Asquith, only son from the second marriage of the first Earl, became a successful film director.

Margot Asquith ( née Tennant ), second wife of the first Earl, a socialite, author and wit, became the Countess of Oxford and Asquith upon her husband's becoming the first Earl.

However, when Asquith succeeded Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in April 1908 Tweedmouth was removed as head of the Admiralty and became Lord President of the Council He suffered a nervous breakdown in June 1908, a condition which was said to partly explain his indiscretion in communicating with the German Emperor on naval matters.

He sat as an MP until 1910, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Ashby St Ledgers, of Ashby St Ledgers in the County of Northampton, and became Paymaster General in the government of H. H. Asquith.

On 10 May 1894, Margot married Herbert Henry Asquith and became a " spur to his ambition ".

Dyer persuaded him to spend time researching the biological processes involved in brewing ginger beer, and helped ensure his entry to the Linnaean society, his signature was on a letter to the prime minister of the day H H Asquith recommending a pension should be paid to his widow, Selina after his death.

Asquith replied to this speech at the National Liberal Club: "... keep faithful to your old traditions ... Think, in a situation such as this, and with appeals such as those which have been made to our fellow Liberals outside, what would have been the attitude of Mr Gladstone.

In a break with precedent, Edward asked Campbell-Bannerman's successor, H. H. Asquith, to travel to Biarritz to kiss hands.

Before the 1923 election, he resolved his dispute with Asquith, allowing the Liberals to run a united ticket against Stanley Baldwin's policy of tariffs ( although there was speculation that Baldwin had adopted such a policy in order to forestall Lloyd George from doing so ).

By autumn 1915, with Asquith ’ s Coalition close to breaking up over conscription, he was blamed for the failure to bring in that measure and for the excessive influence which civilians like Churchill and Haldane had come to exert over strategy, allowing ad hoc campaigns to develop in Sinai, Mesopotamia and Salonika.

Asquith, who told Robertson that Kitchener was “ an impossible colleague ” and “ his veracity left much to be desired ”, acted in charge of the War Office, but Kitchener took his seals of office with him so he could not be sacked in his absence.

Others stress his continued high administrative ability, and argue that many of the major reforms popularly associated with Lloyd George as " the man who won the war " as actually having been implemented by Asquith.

In 1912, Asquith fell in love with Venetia Stanley, and his romantic obsession with her continued into 1915, when she married Edwin Montagu, a Liberal Cabinet Minister ; a volume of Asquith's letters to Venetia, often written during Cabinet meetings and describing political business in some detail, has been published ; but it is not known whether or not their relationship was sexually consummated.

Although Asquith himself was a right-wing Liberal, he continued to work with Lloyd George in setting up unemployment insurance, helping to set the stage for the welfare state in Britain.

Asquith led the nation to war in alliance with France.

In November 1915 an Anglo-French “ Standing Committee of an advisory character ” ( prime ministers and such other politicians and generals as were required, with Hankey and a French counterpart taking minutes ) was set up, but the French Prime Minister Briand rejected Asquith ’ s proposal of a permanent secretariat.

On Whit Monday 1916 Bonar Law discussed the succession to the job of Secretary of State for War ( Kitchener had just drowned on a trip to Russia ); he was irritated not only at having to travel to Asquith's home – the Wharf, at Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire – but also, he claimed, finding Asquith playing bridge with three ladies.

After Bonar Law had refused to wait until the hand was finished, Asquith offered him the job, but he declined as he had already agreed with Lloyd George that the latter should have the job.

Women's Rights activists also turned against Asquith when he adopted the ' Business as Usual ' policy at the beginning of the war, while the introduction of conscription was unpopular with mainstream Liberals.

Asquith, along with most leading Liberals, refused to serve in the new government.

By this time, Asquith had become very unpopular with the public ( as Lloyd George was perceived to have " won the war " by displacing him ) and, along with most leading Liberals, lost his seat in the 1918 elections, at which the Liberals split into Asquith and Lloyd George factions.