ABSTRACT
Like a boulder rolling down a mountainside, the political effects of the war gathered momentum as the conflict stretched out. The Liberals, senior partner in a Progressive Alliance with Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs, had managed to take the country into battle under a shaky banner of political unity, convinced that it was possible to wage war without betraying their libertarian sympathies. Yet they struggled to come to grips with the new realities of industrial warfare and, in May 1915, Prime Minister Asquith formed a new coalition government with Andrew Bonar Law’s Conservatives. This itself was consumed 18 months later by a more fully fledged coalition led by Lloyd George, backed mainly by the Conservatives, but also with a group of his own Liberal supporters and a smattering of Labour MPs. Ever since the days of Walpole, Britons had seen their parliamentary political system develop as an essentially two-party contest, so coalition government of this type was relatively new to British politics. Pushing aside traditional party loyalties for the sake of defeating Germany persuaded some in Westminster that coalition was the future model of political governance. But, though coalition certainly strengthened wartime government at the expense of political allegiance, it only smothered party ties instead of burying them.
