The Liberal Democrats, at the time of writing, have only fourteen MPs. Yet the significance of Liberalism in the history of the Constitutional History of the United Kingdom does not lie in the immediate present: this is a story that stretches deep into the past; covering not merely the giants of the historic Liberal Party in the nineteenth century, but the Whig inheritance from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century constitutional disputes. Hence, while this chapter will conclude with reference to the modern Liberal Party – an alliance, from 1981, between historic Liberalism and the Social Democratic Party; fusing formally in 1988 – it will primarily consider the longer history of Liberalism and the British Constitution.

The formation of the National Government and the debates around national recovery bring into stark focus the national distinctions that still shaped British politics in the age of mass democracy and mass media. This chapter explores the effect of these distinctions on how Scottish Unionists and Welsh Conservatives related to the National Government, how they presented its record of economic recovery to local voters, and how their opponents responded. Drawing on case studies including Dunbartonshire and Dundee in Scotland, Pembrokeshire and Gower in Wales, the chapter analyses the popular politics of National Conservatism as it traversed the so-called ‘Anglo-Celtic frontier’. Starting with a discussion of the 1931 general election campaign, it demonstrates how the National Government helped the Conservatives to neutralise old hostilities while also helping their opponents to renew or inspire anti-Tory sentiment. This was reflected in the election results: in Scotland, the Unionists gained twenty-eight seats, including Dundee for the first time, while in Wales it gained only five seats and failed to regain Pembrokeshire. The chapter argues that this in turn set the politics of recovery in Scotland and Wales on different trajectories. Through its MPs and ministers, the government enjoyed a high-profile presence in Scotland that it lacked in Wales. Even so, in both nations its claims of recovery, like the National Government itself, provoked renewed anti-Tory – and often anti-Westminster – rhetoric among Liberals, Labour and, in Scotland, nationalists. At the 1935 general election while little changed in the relative strengths of Scottish Unionism and Welsh Conservatism, Labour emerged as the net beneficiary.