ABSTRACT
The career and reputation of Herbert Henry Asquith are creditably associated with the reforms of the pre-First World War period, which saw the emergence of the Liberal welfare state. Less auspiciously, they are also associated with the failure to tackle the women’s suffrage issue and Irish Question of the same period. However, whilst Asquith’s period as Prime Minister inaugurated political and constitutional change, much of the political credit he gained disappeared with his career and reputation during the First World War. He was the last Prime Minister of a purely Liberal government, and in his conflict with Lloyd George over the premiership, in December 1916, split the Liberal Party and brought forward its almost inevitable decline.
