Carlton Hayes’ British Social Politics (1913, 580 pp.) is a collection of documents detailing the fate of the social legislation attempted by the liberals when they were swept into power in Great Britain in 1905, a situation not unlike the present situation in a land west of England.  The aristocracy never wants to give up an ounce of privilege, and will spill lots of blood - always that of others - to maintain the status quo.  In his introductory note, Hayes reminds us that not much has changed in a century.  For example, on the conservatives:

The interested conservative classes have always had their many apologists, whether of the obscurantist type who seek to justify opposition to change by reference to the mysterious workings of a Divine Providence, or of the so-called scientific turn who aim to clothe existent inequality and injustice in the language of the economic schools.  In fact, many clergymen and other ethical teachers, and political economists with their laissez-faire theories, and lawyers and judges with their juristic explanations of the Englishman’s right to freedom of contract, all contributed support, directly or indirectly, throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, to that compact conservatism which, in the name of law and order and security, or of sound economic doctrine, or even of God, checked the growth of the social democracy and prevented the application of its remedies.

Or the two-party system:

The two-party system, whatever may be its advantages, has certain defects, as we in the United Stares known only too well, - a devotion to names rather than to principles, a traditional, almost hereditary, alignment of voters on important questions, and a loyalty to party often transcending loyalty to the nation at large, - and evidences of these defects are not lacking in English history.  When one thinks of the parthy squabbles over protection and imperialism and Irish Home Rule, and of the time and energy spent in gaining some slight tactical advantage for a political party, he wonders whether the most successful operation of real democracy will not be through channels other than the two-party system.

Or of the supposed liberals being as opposed as the conservatives to real change:

But the liberals…appeared far more anxious to rid their brethren of black slavery beyond the seas than to check the growth of white serfdom in their own factories at home.  The free-trade agitation of Cobden and Bright was the extreme radical plank in the Liberal platform of those days; the party failed utterly to appreciate the aggravated distress of the working classes, or, if they did appreciate it, their self-interest or economic principles restrained them from applying remedies; and it was the Liberals quite as much as the Tories who ridiculed and suppressed the Chartist movement.  In their repugnance to a wider democracy and to state action for the improvement of the general welfare, the Liberals of the mid-century held fast to the faith of their forefathers, the Burkes and the Pitts.

Or of the typical strategery of the conservatives:

While that remarkable leader [Disraeli] never lost an opportunity, in novel-writing or in parliamentary debate, to keep alive the Tory tradition of exalting the prestige of the landed aristocracy and the Anglican Church, and of proclaiming them as the bulwarks of English liberty, he was moved by the same Zeitgeist which supplied political theories to a Napoleon III and to a Bismarck.  Disraeli, like his great contemporaries on the continent, declared that something definite should be done for the poorer and working classes in the community and that they should be educated to a proper sense of what they owed to the crown, the lords, and the church; and in the meantime, a vigorous foreign and imperialistic policy would distract public attention from the graver domestic ills.

Or the emasculation of any legislation that might effect real change useful for those not amongst the oligarchs:

The Workmen’s Compensation Bill [of 1905], an extension of employer’s liability to several classes of workmen not enumerated in the Act of 1897, was amended out of any semblance of its original form and at length failed completely.