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.

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.

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.

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.

Several Cabinet ministers resigned, and Asquith, the master of domestic politics, proved a poor war leader.

At the outset of World War I, the Prime Minister, Asquith, quickly had Lord Kitchener appointed Secretary of State for War ; Asquith had been filling the job himself as a stopgap following the resignation of Colonel Seeley over the Curragh Incident earlier in 1914, and Kitchener was by chance briefly in Britain on leave when war was declared.

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

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.

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 ).

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.

After Lloyd George ’ s Paris speech ( 12 November ) at which he said that “ when he saw the appalling casualty lists he wish ( ed ) it had not been necessary to win so many (“ victories ”)” Asquith ( briefed by Robertson ) debated the matter in the Commons ( 19 November ).

Asquith was also active in Parliament when Lloyd George, keen to refocus British efforts against Turkey rather than on the Western Front, removed Robertson as CIGS early in 1918.

Lloyd George succeeded him as chairman of the Liberal Members of Parliament, but Asquith remained overall head of the party until 1926, when Lloyd George, who had quarrelled with Asquith once again over whether or not to support the General Strike ( Asquith supported the government ), succeeded him in that position as well.

Curzon joined the Cabinet when Asquith formed his coalition in May 1915.

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.

Wilson briefly acted in command of Monro ’ s First Army when Monro left to become Commander-in-Chief, India, but despite the hopes of his many political friends Wilson was blocked by Robertson, Haig and Asquith from further promotion.

During the early 1920s he practised successfully at the Bar, before winning Spen Valley at the general election in 1922, and in 1922-24 he served as deputy leader of the Liberal Party, a role he relinquished when Asquith once again lost his seat in Parliament and Lloyd George took over the chairmanship of the Liberal MPs.

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.

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.

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.

* 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.

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

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.

During the Great War the Liberal Party split into those led by former Premier Herbert Henry Asquith and the new Premier David Lloyd George.

However, Asquith was not as successful as his successor as Chancellor David Lloyd George in getting reforms through Parliament as the House of Lords still had a veto over legislation at that stage.

FitzAlan was elected Member of Parliament for Chichester in 1894, a seat he held until 1921, and served briefly under Arthur Balfour as a Lord of the Treasury in 1905 and under H. H. Asquith and later David Lloyd George as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury from 1915 to 1921 ( jointly from December 1916 onwards ).

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.

" He led the way for the longest period of successful radical government ever, which was continued by Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George ," Lord Steel said.

There followed Asquith ’ s attempt to introduce Home Rule in July 1916, David Lloyd George, then Minister for Munitions, was then sent to Dublin to offer this to the leaders of the Irish Party, Redmond and Dillon.

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

British political leaders regarded the executions initially as unwise, later as a catastrophe, with the British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and later prime minister David Lloyd George stating that they regretted allowing the British military to treat the matter as a matter of military law in wartime, rather than insisting that the leaders were treated under civilian criminal law.

However, the battle of attrition on the Somme, coupled with a change of Britain's Prime Minister, with David Lloyd George succeeding Herbert Asquith on 7 December, destabilised the status quo sufficiently to bring about a policy reversal making attacks on the Central Powers weak points, away from the Western Front desirable.

In 1922 Sinclair entered the House of Commons as a Liberal Member of Parliament ( MP ) for Caithness and Sutherland, supporting David Lloyd George and defeating the incumbent Liberal supporter of H. H. Asquith.

In December 1916 it was proposed that the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith should delegate decision-making to a small, three-man committee chaired by the Secretary of State for War David Lloyd George.

The political crisis grew from this point until Asquith was forced to resign as Prime Minister ; he was succeeded by David Lloyd George who thereupon formed a small War Cabinet.

His father was chosen as chairman of the rump of the 23 independent MPs who backed Herbert Asquith in the Liberal Party in the House of Commons whilst the bulk of the Liberal MPs had followed David Lloyd George into the Coalition Liberal party in the November 1918 election.

In July 1916 Derby returned to the government when he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for War by H. H. Asquith, and in December 1916 he was promoted to Secretary of State for War by David Lloyd George.

Asquith, especially thanks to Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, established the foundations of the welfare state in the UK before the First World War.

Liberals most identified with these reforms were the prime minister H. H. Asquith, John Maynard Keynes, David Lloyd George ( especially as Chancellor of the Exchequer ), Winston Churchill ( as President of the Board of Trade ) in addition to the civil servant William Beveridge.

In 1908, Asquith became Prime Minister, and David Lloyd George ( who was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer ) " defected " onto the Liberal Imperialists.