Leese joined the "Centre International d'Études sur le Fascisme" (CINEF), an international 'think tank' based in Switzerland whose aim was the promotion of fascism, and served as its British correspondent. He also became close to one of his neighbours, the economist Arthur Kitson, a member of The Britons. Their friendship lasted until Kitson's death in 1937. The latter persuaded Leese that control of money was the key to power and that money was ultimately controlled by the Jews. Kitson supplied him with a copy of the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", on which Leese wrote, "Everything in this little book rang true, I simply could not put it down until I had finished it." Leese also revered The Britons' founder Henry Hamilton Beamish as an anti-Jewish "pioneer". In 1924, he was elected a councillor to Stamford Town Council along with fellow fascist Harry Simpson, becoming the first elected fascist councillors in Britain. The British Fascists had generally chosen not to intervene in "the despised democratic system", and Leese's own contempt for democracy seems to have been paradoxically reinforced by the election. He wrote, "Many people I knew voted for me because I had cured their pigs or pets and without the slightest idea what I stood for".