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The Effect of Electoral Pacts on the Decline of the Liberal Part
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
Extract
‘The decline of the Liberal Party was not due to the inescapable logic of history, or to the inapplicability of Liberal remedies to the issues of the day, but to avoidable mistakes made by Liberals themselves.’1 This is the essence of a recent reinterpretation of the fall of the Liberal Party. The mistakes consisted chiefly of the 1906 Liberal—Labour electoral pact, which gave Labour significant parliamentary representation but was of little benefit to the Liberals: the split in the Liberal Party dating from Asquith's resignation in 1916 and the resulting electoral pact between the Lloyd George Liberals and the Conservatives: the failure of the Liberals to form a government in 1923: and the despair of the Liberal leaders after the 1929 election and their resulting failure to act as an independent party.
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References
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