Ideological Trajectory of Successful UK Liberals

Commissar From Kiev

Commissar From Kiev

If the UK Liberal Party stayed a major party and was not replaced by Labour, what would there likely ideological trajectory be?
Would they evolve into a progressive party? A centrist one?
 
shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
You'd need Labour (or proto-Labour) to be absorbed into the Liberals or join them in an electoral alliance like the Liberal Unionists did with the Conservatives. If this happened, then the continuing Liberal-Labour Party would have likely emerged as Social Democrats.

There are three ways I see this: One, that the Liberals recognise the threat Labour poses early on and begins to work with Labour (giving them free runs) on the conditions they caucus with them in the House. The issues the Liberals had in the end was that their base wasn't dissimilar to the Tories, whilst Labour was able to form a strong coalition of the working class and trade unionist. If Labour is bound to the Liberals long enough, they may never break. This has the issue though that if the Liberals and Labour fail to branch their appeal into one another bases, a split it inevitable, and Labour is likely to come out on top of such and leave us in the same position we wanted to avoid.

The SDF emerges victorious over the LRC, and Christian Socialists, turned off by the atheistic SDF, shift to the Liberal Party or a continuing but weaker LRC that has the previous conditions and splits the working class and trade unionist vote. The Liberals take a more Christian Socialist vibe.

The Lloyd George/Asquith split doesn't happen in 1915, and whomever is leader is able to negotiate an electoral pact with Labour. Sort of a Liberal Party of Australia kind of thing.

You sure as hell won't get it from the Liberals having a small surge and forming Government in the mid-20's.

EDIT: I should qualify that by 'Social Democrats', I'm referring to the 'neo-Socialist' Harold Macmillan/Rab Butler garden variety kind.
 
Commissar From Kiev

Commissar From Kiev

shiftygiant said:
You'd need Labour (or proto-Labour) to be absorbed into the Liberals or join them in an electoral alliance like the Liberal Unionists did with the Conservatives. If this happened, then the continuing Liberal-Labour Party would have likely emerged as Social Democrats.

There are three ways I see this: One, that the Liberals recognise the threat Labour poses early on and begins to work with Labour (giving them free runs) on the conditions they caucus with them in the House. The issues the Liberals had in the end was that their base wasn't dissimilar to the Tories, whilst Labour was able to form a strong coalition of the working class and trade unionist. If Labour is bound to the Liberals long enough, they may never break. This has the issue though that if the Liberals and Labour fail to branch their appeal into one another bases, a split it inevitable, and Labour is likely to come out on top of such and leave us in the same position we wanted to avoid.

The SDF emerges victorious over the LRC, and Christian Socialists, turned off by the atheistic SDF, shift to the Liberal Party or a continuing but weaker LRC that has the previous conditions and splits the working class and trade unionist vote. The Liberals take a more Christian Socialist vibe.

The Lloyd George/Asquith split doesn't happen in 1915, and whomever is leader is able to negotiate an electoral pact with Labour. Sort of a Liberal Party of Australia kind of thing.

You sure as hell won't get it from the Liberals having a small surge and forming Government in the mid-20's.
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I like the idea of an Australian-style LibLab pact forming. How might that take place?
 
shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Commissar From Kiev said:
I like the idea of an Australian-style LibLab pact forming. How might that take place?
Click to expand...
Considering one of the big issues the Liberal Party had was being in power from 1905-1918/1922, which left the party torn in several ways and gave Labour a big opening, the way to have this happen is to have the Liberals not be in power for so long, and this can be done two ways:

Either Balfour wins, or the Liberals loose in 1910.

For the first, Balfour's ploy actually working and the Asquith screws the pooch over the Dunglass Compact, with H.C.B resigning outright and a Liberal Party rife with vicious infighting loosing in 1906. This would take Asquith out of the picture, and with the Liberals on the Opposition, they would be able to work with Labour more effectively. With a reflective period on the Opposition, they may decide to continue the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact, but turn it into a much broader alliance with Labour in an effort to beat the Tories in the next election. If they win, then the only issue is the potential of the First World War; this may and likely will be butterflied by Balfour's winning, but a major War is going to have the pacifistic MacDonald in knots and may break the Pact or his Party.

Alternatively, the Liberals loose in 1910, and have the same reflective period and renew their pact with Labour. The Conservatives run the show when it comes to the War, resulting in the Liberals not being tarred by the war and the fractures it caused, and with Labour could present themselves as a viable post-war alternative. "We won the War, now lets win the peace!" and all that.

Basically the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact has to become the official policy of both parties for an Australian style LibLab, and those tow scenarios, whilst sketchy, are the best I can come up with.
 
Commissar From Kiev

Commissar From Kiev

shiftygiant said:
Considering one of the big issues the Liberal Party had was being in power from 1905-1918/1922, which left the party torn in several ways and gave Labour a big opening, the way to have this happen is to have the Liberals not be in power for so long, and this can be done two ways:

Either Balfour wins, or the Liberals loose in 1910.

For the first, Balfour's ploy actually working and the Asquith screws the pooch over the Dunglass Compact, with H.C.B resigning outright and a Liberal Party rife with vicious infighting loosing in 1906. This would take Asquith out of the picture, and with the Liberals on the Opposition, they would be able to work with Labour more effectively. With a reflective period on the Opposition, they may decide to continue the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact, but turn it into a much broader alliance with Labour in an effort to beat the Tories in the next election. If they win, then the only issue is the potential of the First World War; this may and likely will be butterflied by Balfour's winning, but a major War is going to have the pacifistic MacDonald in knots and may break the Pact or his Party.

Alternatively, the Liberals loose in 1910, and have the same reflective period and renew their pact with Labour. The Conservatives run the show when it comes to the War, resulting in the Liberals not being tarred by the war and the fractures it caused, and with Labour could present themselves as a viable post-war alternative. "We won the War, now lets win the peace!" and all that.

Basically the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact has to become the official policy of both parties for an Australian style LibLab, and those tow scenarios, whilst sketchy, are the best I can come up with.
Click to expand...

I quite like the latter scenario, with the Tories being in power in WWI and Labour and the Liberals uniting as a post-war alternative.
 
KingCrawa

KingCrawa

shiftygiant said:
Considering one of the big issues the Liberal Party had was being in power from 1905-1918/1922, which left the party torn in several ways and gave Labour a big opening, the way to have this happen is to have the Liberals not be in power for so long, and this can be done two ways:

Either Balfour wins, or the Liberals loose in 1910.

For the first, Balfour's ploy actually working and the Asquith screws the pooch over the Dunglass Compact, with H.C.B resigning outright and a Liberal Party rife with vicious infighting loosing in 1906. This would take Asquith out of the picture, and with the Liberals on the Opposition, they would be able to work with Labour more effectively. With a reflective period on the Opposition, they may decide to continue the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact, but turn it into a much broader alliance with Labour in an effort to beat the Tories in the next election. If they win, then the only issue is the potential of the First World War; this may and likely will be butterflied by Balfour's winning, but a major War is going to have the pacifistic MacDonald in knots and may break the Pact or his Party.

Alternatively, the Liberals loose in 1910, and have the same reflective period and renew their pact with Labour. The Conservatives run the show when it comes to the War, resulting in the Liberals not being tarred by the war and the fractures it caused, and with Labour could present themselves as a viable post-war alternative. "We won the War, now lets win the peace!" and all that.

Basically the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact has to become the official policy of both parties for an Australian style LibLab, and those tow scenarios, whilst sketchy, are the best I can come up with.
Click to expand...
So you are going to write this now right??
 
shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Commissar From Kiev said:
I might actually try making a few infoboxes based on the 1910 POD. Might I consult you on that at points?
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I don't really know enough about the party during that period beyond an overview; all of that was what I mostly gleamed from a skim through The Strange Death of Liberal England, which would be a far better source to consult than me.
 
shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Simon said:
It was your use of the term in this, U.K., context.
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And there's actually nothing wrong with using the word caucus to describe the hypothetical relationship that the Liberal and Labour Party would have in Parliament. I mean, of all the issues with what I've written, the word 'caucus' is fairly non-issue because in this context it's perfectly fine.

What's actually an issue with what I've written relates to the Liberal Party Caucus, as the Liberal Party Caucus was the main reason trade unionists and socialists formed a separate Party. Prior to the formation of the Independent Labour Party in 1893, the Liberal Party was seen as a way for the working class to gain representation, which they did from around 1869 onwards with the Labour Representation Committee and later the Labour Electoral Association. However, because the structure of the Liberal Party Caucus, which favoured the Liberal's over the 'Lib-Lab's, and internal strife within the LEA over who they could and shouldn't nominate, trade unionists and socialists broke off to do its own thing. That's a gross simplification of a very complicated thing, but had the Liberal Party Caucus been arranged differently, then it's possible that the trade unionists and socialists could have stayed Liberal.

EDIT: Of course, then again, the situation that arose in Fight or Be Right could have happened when the Unionists split.
 

Bahamut-255

Interesting idea, especially with regards to altering the course of either the January or December 1910 General Election to allow the Liberal Party a chance to recover while in Opposition.

In fact, to do that, you only need to swing One Seat from the Liberals to the Conservatives in the December Election and you've got the Conservatives as the largest party in terms of seats. Which could put them in power during the War Years if WWI proceeds as per OTL, leaving them with the fallout while an unstained Liberal Party can take the reins of Government later on.

Other things that can help their fortunes are avoiding the Cash-for-Peerage Scandal that aided in their Downfall (far from the only cause, but one of them), alongside having them reform into a single party in 1918 instead of one faction remaining in coalition with the Conservatives, which IMHO was a Monumental Strategic Blunder on the part of David Lloyd-George - although these two are dependant on the Liberal being in Government from 1910 onwards AFAIK.
 
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