Asking why Britain did not follow the same path as much of Europe in the early part of the 20th C is a worthy question but this is an oddly ahistorical article.

Asking why Britain did not follow the same path as much of Europe in the early part of the 20th C is a worthy question but this is an oddly ahistorical article. The rise of the New Liberal government didn't happen by accident as the article seems to imply, it happened in response to social conditions. The fact that Britain took three years to win the Boer War (largely because the army was unfit to fight) was a national scandal, and gave birth to a national preoccupation with the condition of the working class. Independently of each other, two wealthy British industrialists, Booth and Rowntree, published two surveys into the state of working class life in Britain. These found that 30% of people were living in poverty, and that the conditions were such that people would be unable to pull themselves out of poverty alone. While the rest of Europe engaged in a great battle between Marxism and Imperialism, British politics set about trying to improve the condition of the working classes. Political revolution has also never really been the British way. Almost all of the major institutions of British society (including arguably the trade unions) are under the pall of political conservatism. One of the reasons why the recent Brexit has been such a surprise is that Britons have never been given to overthrow the whole system. Politics in Britain pre-war was also intensely local. Most people lived and died close to where they were born, people were even more parochial than they are now, and most people saw what was happening in Europe as completely distant from their lives. Politics in Britain pre war may have held some of the conditions for fascism, but it was never likely due to a multitude of reasons never addressed in this article. Also, it was a strange kind of crisis for conservatism - the Conservatives went on to dominate 20th Century politics in Britain.