[2] He unsuccessfully contested the safe Tory parliamentary seat of Barkston Ash in Yorkshire in the 1945 and 1950 elections, before returning to Norfolk to help North Norfolk Labour MP Edwin Gooch.
The constituency was unusual in being an agricultural seat electing Labour MPs since 1945, owing to a history of organised agricultural trade unionism and a working-class rural Labour vote in Norfolk at the time, very atypical of the rest of the country.
Subsequently, Labour have never regained North Norfolk, and were relegated to third place when the Liberal Democrats gained the seat in 2001.
[7] Hazell, who reached his 100th birthday in April 2007, was the third longest-living MP in British history; only Theodore Cooke Taylor (102) and Ronald Atkins (104) have lived longer.
On 6 November 2008 he overtook Lord Shinwell's record as the longest-living former MP of recent times.