Winston Churchill lost his seat of Dundee in the 1922 general election as a National Liberal follower of David Lloyd George.

[5] His campaign fell flat after reassurances from Churchill quietened the local Liberals and in the 1923 he won the seat of Keighley in West Yorkshire.

He was an ex radical Liberal who had formed the Congo Reform Association and had been prominent in the pacifist inclined Union of Democratic Control during the First World War eventually leading to involvement with the Labour Party in 1918.

[8] Scrymgeour had attracted the crucial support of John Sime who led the very strong locally based Dundee and District Union of Jute and Flax Workers.

This was the second election for the Dundee seat held with universal male suffrage and (limited) female suffrage under the Representation of the People Act 1918, Churchill partially blamed this for his defeat saying "The great extensions of the franchise fundamentally altered the political character of Dundee ... and great numbers of very poor women and mill girls, streamed to the poll during the last two hours of the voting.

[14] After the 1923 general election was called, seven Liberal associations asked Churchill to stand as their candidate, and he selected Leicester West, but he did not win the seat.

[16] He strongly opposed the MacDonald government's decision to loan money to Soviet Russia and feared the signing of an Anglo-Soviet Treaty.

[17] On 19 March 1924, alienated by Liberal support for Labour, Churchill stood as an independent anti-socialist "Constitutionalist" candidate in the Westminster Abbey by-election but was defeated.