Moss lost the highly marginal constituency after a single term and was forced to return to his previous career.
Saying that he felt "ashamed and humiliated", he blamed the problems on the Conservative Party, explaining that "they had the means and opportunity to put it right and did nothing".
He called on the new Parliament to bring about full employment, and claimed it was silly to talk about competition because the Conservative Party had destroyed it.
[8] Moss held a meeting specifically for women at Berkhamsted Town Hall on 15 February at which he insisted Labour was opposed to communism and was combatting it by improving living conditions in Britain and other countries.
[13] Although Moss was said to be willing to fight Hemel Hempstead at future elections, and the Divisional Labour Party was willing to readopt him,[13] in 1951 he moved away to Nuneaton.
[2] The general election followed very soon; on being adopted as the Labour candidate, Moss said the Conservatives may have "hoped to win votes by bribery" with the tax-cutting 1955 budget.
[19] Opinion locally believed the Conservatives started off with an advantage due to smoother organisation in the early campaign; however Labour supporters came back more effectively in the last ten days.
[20] Moss had resigned his post at Nuneaton Technical College in order to fight the election (although there was an understanding that he could have his job back if he lost).
[20] Moss made an early maiden speech on 9 June, claiming that 1955 would be a crisis year in the balance of payments and that action was necessary to stop economic dependence on countries using the dollar.
[29] In a speech at Eastern Green on 11 January 1956, Moss had claimed that the preoccupation with pacts by the Conservative government had "set the Near East on fire" and that there was a danger of war between the Arab states and Israel in 1956.
[30] As the Suez Crisis began, Moss spoke at Corley saying that Anthony Eden could not impose on Egypt a plan which it did not accept, and urged compromise because freedom to use the canal mattered more than Nasser's nationalisation.
[34] Moss agreed, together with his Conservative opponent Gordon Matthews, to join the Temperance Group in the House of Commons if they won; the two jointly received a delegation of clergy and laymen from the Tamworth and District Ministers and Clergy Fraternal who put the principles of the National Temperance Federation to them in the last week of the campaign.
After his defeat was announced, Moss declared that he would leave politics and rejoin the teaching profession; he began part-time work as a teacher at Nuneaton Technical College the week after the election.