Showing that the point I often make about how little most voters know about politics is nothing new, here’s a quote from the 1925 book, The Confessions of a Candidate:

The true art and sphere of the candidate is not to make great and convincing speeches to an electorate thirsting for deeper information upon abstract economics or the foreign situation, but rather to preserve the peace between the conflicting and contending factions which he will find among his own party, and to appeal to the 90 per cent. of the electors more stirred by their own affairs than by politics.

The book is by Frank Gray, Liberal MP for Oxford City 1922-24 and a junior whip. But his political career was far more dramatic than that makes it sound.

His 1922 victory saw him gain the seat on a 30%. He won re-election 1923 with only a small dip in his vote. An election petition followed, however, and his agent was found to have submitted false election expense returns in an attempt to hide spending above the legal limit. As a result, Gray was unseated as an MP, becoming the last MP to lose their seat for electoral malpractice until Phil Woolas in 2010.*

The resulting by-election was contested for the Liberals by C.B. Fry. However, this amazingly multi-talented man, perhaps best known as a cricketer and FA Cup finalist, and also able to jump backwards from a standing start onto a mantelpiece, lost.

In the book, Gray excuses the breach of the law as a mistake that he was already seeking legal relief for when the election petition was filed. Such excuse-making might be expected, but to Gray’s credit, he defends his agent: “[He] was placed through my folly and pressure in a position he could not possibly fill … He had unwittingly overspent … So innocent was his method that he filed and published accounts which disclosed irregularities to the whole world”.

However, reports that Gray’s election tactics including blocking the exit of a local train station to delay sufficiently mainly Conservative commuters so that they missed the close of polls suggests he was not quite the figure of virtue his published contrition over the petition suggests.

All this makes Confessions of a Candidate a fascinating read at times. Second-hand copies are can be available at reasonable prices though they fluctuate widely, even up to at the time of typing nearly £1,000 (!). Mine came in at much less only a few weeks back, however.

* Fiona Jones was disqualified from being an MP in 1999, but she won her appeal and so retained her seat.

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