1909 Bermondsey by-election industry which was quite significant locally. In 1907 he became Mayor of Bermondsey. He was a supporter of Tariff Reform. Polling Day was fixed for the 28 October, just 21 days after the death of Cooper. There was a significant speech made by Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, at Limehouse on 30 July 1909 in which he outlined the proposals in the People's Budget. Since then, there had been no by-election in which to gauge public reaction to these proposals. The proposals therefore became central to the campaign. The Conservatives campaigned against the radicalism of the Liberals and
David Lloyd George experience, and only 23 of them were actually opponents of the coalition. Until April 1919 the government whip was extended to "all" Liberal MPs and Lloyd George might easily have been elected chairman of the Liberal MPs (Asquith was still party leader but had lost his seat) had he been willing to antagonise his Conservative coalition partners by doing so. Lloyd George represented Britain at the Paris Peace Conference, clashing with the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, the US President, Woodrow Wilson, and the Italian Prime Minister, Vittorio Orlando. Unlike Clemenceau and Orlando, Lloyd George on the whole stood on