David Lloyd George is best known
as the highly energetic British Prime Minister (1916–22) who guided the Empire
through the First World
War to victory over Germany and its allies. He became Prime Minister
after then PM Herbert Asquith, who was increasingly seen as weak in his
planning of the war effort refused to agree to Lloyd George's demand that he be
allowed to chair a small committee to manage the war. On the 5th December 1916,
Asquith was forced out and on the 7th December Lloyd George became Prime
Minister, with the nation demanding he take vigorous charge of the war.
He was a major player at the Paris Peace
Conference of 1919 that reordered Europe after the Great War. As an
icon of 20th-century liberalism, he is regarded as the founder of the British
welfare state. He made a greater impact on British public life than any other
20th-century leader, thanks to his leadership of the war, his postwar role in
reshaping Europe, and his introduction of Britain's social welfare system
before the war.
During a long tenure of office,
mainly as Chancellor of
the Exchequer, he was a key figure in the introduction of many
reforms which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state. He was the
last Liberal
to serve as Prime
Minister, his coalition premiership being supported more by
Conservatives than by his own Liberals, and the subsequent split was a key
factor in the decline of the Liberal Party as a serious political force
thereafter. After 1922 he was a marginalised and widely mistrusted figure.
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