Although generally moderate in politics, his support for British intervention in Suez led him to resign the Conservative Party whip.
Turner had intended to rejoin the family business but found that his uncle who had run it had died and that the only job offered to him was on unacceptable terms.
When the sitting Labour Member of Parliament for Paddington North announced his resignation, Turner was adopted as Conservative Party candidate for the byelection on 2 November 1946.
[6] In August 1950, the sitting Conservative MP for Oxford Quintin Hogg succeeded to the Viscountcy of Hailsham leaving a vacancy.
[11] Facing a straight fight with Labour candidate Kersland Lewis, Turner highlighted the issues of housing, the cost of living, defence and leadership, and claimed the support of a number of Conservative trade union shop stewards.
He was particularly concerned with the export trade, arguing that industry suffered from continual interference by Government departments which did not affect Britain's competitors.
[17] In June 1954 he presented a petition from 1,140 undergraduates at Oxford University which called for abolition of the Hydrogen bomb and more effective moves towards disarmament.
He abstained in a vote approving the policy of intervention in Egypt in December 1956,[22] and was outraged when the Government decided to withdraw from Suez.
[28] Turner was concerned also with the situation of Cyprus and in February 1958 declared that he would rejoin the Parliamentary Conservative Party if he got an undertaking that the Government would not weaken their attitude there.
[32] In his last months in Parliament, he presented a petition signed by almost 500,000 people calling for special action to preserve the copyright of W. S. Gilbert's words for all time (they were due to run out in 1961).
He had had to borrow a great deal from his bank, and his decision to stand down from Parliament was actually prompted by financial difficulties: in 1958 his affairs were placed in the hands of accountants and a committee of creditors.
[6] The bankruptcy hearing referred discreetly to "marital difficulties" which had also affected him; in 1966 Turner's wife, whom he had married in 1938, obtained a decree nisi of divorce against him on grounds of his desertion.
He was later general manager of Amalgamated Developers Ltd.[2] In 1971, when the Suez rebel group reunited, Turner described himself as "living in obscurity and poverty in a shared room in Notting Hill".