: David Laws
: Serpents, Goats and Turkeys A Century of Liberal-Labour Relations
: Biteback Publishing
: 9781785909436
: 1
: CHF 21.60
:
: Biographien, Autobiographien
: English
: 384
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
The definitive, insider history of the often turbulent political relationship between the Liberals and Labour. Natural allies or fierce competitors? For the past century, Britain's two major centre-left parties have co-existed in sometimes harmonious but more often fraught duopoly, from the 1903 agreement that a prominent Liberal complained was 'nursing into life a serpent which would sting their party to death' to the 1976-77 pact that gave us the phrase 'turkeys voting for Christmas' and beyond, to the failed negotiations that led to the controversial 2010-15 Lib Dem-Conservative coalition. Charting 100 years of British political history, Serpents, Goats and Turkeys explores the formal and informal arrangements that have existed between the parties, covering electoral deals, support for minority governments, formal pacts and full coalitions. What have been the overlaps of policy and ideology, and where have the parties been most divided? What explains the periods of co-operation but also the unwillingness or inability to work together for any significant time? In the wake of the 2024 'Loveless Landslide', former coalition Cabinet minister David Laws also draws on unpublished records and private diaries from the past thirty years of Lib-Lab wrangling to consider the likely options in the event of a future hung parliament. Should the parties work together? Would they be able to? And what are the prospects for voting reform? The answers to such questions will have major implications for British democracy and the future of our politics.

David Laws was the Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil from 2001 to 2015. He was part of the Lib Dem team that negotiated the first Lib Dem-Labour coalition in the Scottish Parliament in 1999. He was also one of the four Lib Dems who negotiated the historic Lib Dem-Conservative coalition in 2010, and he served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury before becoming Minister of State for Schools in the Department for Education and Minister of State for the Cabinet Office. David is the co-editor of the influential Orange Book and is the author of 22 Days in May, Coalition and Coalition Diaries.

The Cabinet was meeting in 10 Downing Street on 22 May 1916 – almost two years into the ‘Great War’. Two of its most senior members, War Minister Lord Kitchener and the Munitions Minister, Lloyd George, were soon due to sail on a secret mission to Russia. They would visit the Tsar and his government to try to keep a financially and militarily stretched ally in the war.

Sitting at the Cabinet table, Lloyd George was passed a folded note, which he opened and quickly read. It was written in the unmistakeable scrawl of the Prime Minister, Asquith. Headed ‘Secret’, it continued: ‘My dear Lloyd George, I hope you may see your way to take up Ireland: at any rate for a short time. It is a unique opportunity and there is no one else who could do as much to bring about a permanent solution. Yours very sincerely, H. H. Asquith’.

This request, a few weeks after the Easter Rising, was to have momentous consequences. It would alter the course of British politics and shatter the Liberal Party. As a result of it, Lloyd George scrapped his plans to join the Russian visit. In consequence, he did not lose his life with Kitchener, when the vessel on which Kitchener was travelling, HMSHampshire, sank with the loss of almost all 749 men on board.

Within six months, Lloyd George went on to mount a coup, replacing Asquith as Prime Minister. This fatally divided the Liberal Party, and by 1918, the Labour Party had replaced them as the main alternative to the Unionists. The Liberals would never again govern alone.

But we must first retrace our steps and consider the background to the great Asquith–Lloyd George split. When war broke out in Europe in early August 1914 and spread rapidly across the globe, problems over Ireland’s future were dominating British politics. Initially, Asquith hoped that the UK could stand apart. But Germany’s decision to violate the neutrality of Belgium brought Britain into the war on a wave of patriotic fervour. Ramsay MacDonald resigned his post as chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, in opposition to his party’s support for war.

Stalemate rapidly set in on the ‘Western Front’, and by May 1915, Asquith was facing criticism in Parliament and the press. Military operations in the Dardanelles had been a disaster and there was increasing focus on the government’s apparent inability to provide the shells, equipment and manpower needed. Asquith’s response was to establish a coalition government, on 25 May 1915. The new Cabinet included nine Unionists and one Labour member – Arthur Henderson. The Liberals maintained a grip on all the key posts.

A coalition might have seemed a natural response to a world war, but it split Labour and angered many Liberals. At a meeting of Liberal MPs, a motion was passed unanimously condemning the arrangement. Asquith was summoned and he explained that ‘certain things had happened; certain things had been divulged; and certain things had em