A capital-ship program without the We Want Eight crisis

Once Lloyd George moves from the Admiralty to the Treasury, he remains skeptical of waste but better understands naval requirements. The counterfactual replaces the sudden We Want Eight campaign with a steadier program of battleships plus trade-protection battlecruisers. Two 15-inch-gun Tiger successors appear alongside the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge programs. A parallel rise in both battleship and battlecruiser costs could press Germany sooner, just as the Queen Elizabeth class historically made the naval race harder to sustain against army spending. Contemporary advice still rejects small-tube boilers as insufficiently reliable for the Queen Elizabeths, so the scenario does not automatically produce a 28-knot fast battleship. The five Revenge-class ships instead become more capable Queen Elizabeth follow-ons, perhaps reaching 23 or 24 knots if later boiler improvements are accepted. Renown and Repulse are consequently unnecessary in their historical form.