“Lloyd George’s Government was Destroyed More by His Style of Government that the Content of His Policies”. Is this a Fair Comment on the Post War Coalition?

Another example of Lloyd George's unorthodox methods was his appointment of what became known as the 'garden suburb'. Again, because he did something different to the 'norm' he was accused yet again of being unorthodox and of acting unconstitutionally in passing the civil service and extending the governments area of control. Lloyd George was hardly known for acting tactfully when it came to dismissing someone who was not fit for the job. Once again with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back and say that fair enough, if someone was not fit for a particular job then why should they be able to continue with it. However, we can also look back and understand that what Lloyd George did would have seemed unorthodox to many.

The fact that Lloyd George was unorthodox inevitably led to him building up an ever-increasing number of enemies. Take Asquith For example, when offered the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer he turned the position down because of past differences. As a result of this, the split in the Liberal, party remained and became even more distinct, thus meaning that Lloyd George had no chance of gaining a majority without the coalition. Once again, his unorthodox methods had caused him to fall out of favour with a number of M.P's.

Furthermore, the fact that Lloyd George introduced a more 'professional' style of government meetings enraged many M.P's. he decided to introduced a cabinet agenda which today this is commonplace in every remotely important meeting but at the time, it was thought to be ridiculous it apparently mad meetings less gentlemanly. Any criticism of this act of Lloyd George seems extremely unfair, the running of a country is hardly an amateurish affair yet once again because he broke the mould of a stereotypical Prim Minister of the time he was considered by many to be unorthodox and unnecessary.

Regardless of how unorthodox his methods may have seemed the obviously worked because Britain was able to survive and win the war. For instance, he established a minimum wage for farm workers in order to help avoid mass starvation in Britain, in conduction with this he introduced a system where by prisoners of war helped to collect the harvest and the convoy system to protect British shipping. His unorthodox methods had once again been affective in achieving their goals however unpopular they may have seemed.

Nevertheless, peacetime was to be a completely different kettle of fish. After the war, it was promised that Britain would be a land fit for heroes. Expectations were extremely high and with the coalition government Lloyd George was now effectively walking on eggshells, his unorthodox methods had previously been contested strongly by many but now he had the added problem of having to appease two parties, one of which had a majority of their own and did not need him in the first place.

The basic problems were that during the war, Briton had understandably over-invested in the staple industries and after the war; millions of people had been left unable to work. Briton was in massive debt and owed money that it was never to receive from Russia. These problems were generally out of the hands of Lloyd George the economy was obviously fragile and made worse by the fact that between December 1920 and June 1921 the number of people unemployed had rose from 300,000 to over 2million. Once again, Lloyd Gorges policies came under threat, for example anti waste was considered by many to be 'Squander mania'.

Basically, Lloyd George had to make the most of an extremely bad situation, people were expecting miracle when they were never going to get them. The agriculture act was the first of Lloyds Georges policies to go entirely wrong; the subsidies promised to farm workers when market prices fell were never actually paid out. This led to Lloyd George not only once again being unorthodox but falling out of favour with around fifty rural M.P's.

Further, more Lloyd Georges policies of rebuilding which were relative successes therefore at the time considered more failures. Looking back at the general reform of the government, we can see that things, compared with governments of future years were quite good. However, people had been expecting far too much and regardless of what people may have thought of Lloyd George at the time he did just as good a job as anyone else could have, plus he had the added pressure of appeasing the coalition.

Towards the end of Lloyd George's time as prime Minister, we are able to see a decline in the effectiveness and tolerance of his unorthodox methods. His failure to deal with the Irish Problem and general dissaprovement of the way in which he dealt with Chanak plus the added humiliation of the honours scandal eventually led to his final decline. No longer would people tolerate his unorthodox methods and his fate was decided after the Carlton Club meeting of 1922.

To conclude, both Lloyd George's style of government and policies were partly to blame for his fall from office. During the war, Britain had required someone who would 'get things done' but peacetime required a man who was reliable and consistent. Regardless of what people thought at the time, his unorthodox ideas, apart from three major events (the Irish Problem, Chanak and the Honours Scandal), Lloyd George generally fulfilled his statement that he would 'get things done'. However Lloyd George was Prime Minister at a time when expectation were far too high, realistically and with the benefit of hindsight we can say that Lloyd George generally made the most of a bad situation. His ideas were unorthodox, not what people were used to but on the most part effective, and it was inevitably his style of government that was the main reason for his fall from office in 1922.