Lloyd was an active Liberal as a young man, and in March 1925 he entertained H. H. Asquith at Magdalene after a Liberal Party meeting at the Cambridge Guildhall. He became President of the Cambridge University Liberal Club. Lloyd was also an active debater in the Cambridge Union Society, where his sparring-partners included Rab Butler, Patrick Devlin, Hugh Foot, Alan King-Hamilton and Geoffrey Lloyd. Lloyd lost his scholarship in June 1925, after obtaining a Second in Classics. He then switched to study History, in which he also obtained a Second.