The big challenge facing David Lloyd George, and indeed the man who had become something of a sidekick of his on the radical wing of the Liberal Party, surprisingly for a former Tory, was how to pay for old age pensions and later for the other social security measures he hoped to introduce.

That was particularly difficult given the pressure to invest more in the Royal Navy, as Germany built itself more ships, and as Germany’s ally, Austria Hungary, pursued an aggressive policy in the Balkans. At one point, Lloyd George seemed to want to fund social security by cutting defence spending. But then he changed, as the Liberal Party set out to spend more on both.

Instead of choosing between guns and butter, Liberals decided to go for both.

Making Lloyd George’s challenge more challenging still.

Illustration: The first of a new class of battleships, HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906. Public domain

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.