It soon became clear that his supporters were content with the selection of Salvesen by the Tories as he was a member of the Tariff Reform League and had stated that if necessary he would be prepared to see the policy of Joseph Chamberlain on Imperial Preference adopted in full measure.
[4] Lamont campaigned as a traditional Liberal free trader, although he was challenged on his previous support for a form of retaliatory duty to protect West Indian sugar producers from unfair foreign competition, which policy he now renounced.
[7] The issue was raised in Buteshire but was given an added salience because it was alleged against Lamont that the Coolie labour (as it was referred to in Edwardian times) on his West Indian property were similarly indentured and that it was hypocritical of him to object to the practice in the Transvaal.
Lamont was able to deflect this attack by showing he had removed the indenture system when he succeeded to the property and that the workers were now retained in an arrangement akin to being tenant farmers.
However, Salvesen stated after the election that the Unionist vote had polled at its full strength[8] and Buteshire should be seen in the context of the general political trend of the time which since 1902 had been decidedly against the government.
The government, which had been in office since 1895, was widely seen as tired and divided and the Liberal opposition was united around key policies on free trade and education, as well as being sustained by a new approach to questions of social reform, the New Liberalism of thinkers such as Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and J A Hobson as well as by dynamic, radical politicians such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill who had defected from the Tories in 1904.