My friends and most of my family think I am mad after all the bad publicity politicians have attracted in recent months. But if anything, the whole expenses scandal fired up my commitment. Things have got to be done differently in the future and I think I can play a part in making the changes needed. I just can’t sit on the sidelines and shout at the TV screen! If you believe in things, and want to effect change, you have to get involved in elected politics. Writing newspaper columns, appearing on TV and writing my blog may have some limited influence at the margins, but you have to be in Parliament to really do something.

There may have been an element of truth about that in the recent past, but I think things are changing. There may well be 200 new Conservative MPs at the next election, who will form the majority of the parliamentary party. Anyone who thinks it will be business as usual will, I hope, be in for a big surprise.

I don’t believe backbench MPs are just lobby fodder. They can really make a difference, both on a local and national level. Look at Douglas Carswell. He’s a man without ministerial ambition but who has achieved a huge amount in his three years in parliament. He is a man of ideas and conviction. If it hadn’t been for him the Speaker would not have been removed. He has led the way in forming ideas on direct democracy and localism. You may not agree with him on everything, but no one can deny he has been an agent of change in the party and in parliament.

If I am selected I will live in the constituency which selects me. I’ll have my doctor there, pay council tax there and have my rubbish collected by the same people as everyone else. I’ll use all the same services that local people use.

Any expenses reclaimed in the pursuit of parliamentary duties will be published online and in full. I will never claim for food, and never claim anything without a proper receipt. But I think everyone will recognize that in order to do their jobs MPs do need to be able to pay staff and run an office. But they must lead by example and make sure every pound they spend of taxpayers’ money must be properly accounted for and justifiable.

My priorities would be my constituents first and my party second. The interests of the constituency must always override partisan political interest. I would hold fortnightly surgeries. I will also guarantee that all letters and emails are answered within 48 hours. I will use new media to build up regular contact with voters – by Facebook, Twitter and email. The internet cannot replace traditional methods of contacting voters, but it can reach groups of people who would otherwise not engage with politics at all. I would also promise to spend one evening, afternoon or morning a week knocking on doors. That remains the best way to gauge what people are really concerned about, both locally and nationally.

No! I know people think all politicians aim to do that job but I can honestly say that at the age of 47 I know what I am good at and I know what I am not good at. Very few people in politics would make good prime ministers, but they are very bad at admitting it. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like the chance to do certain jobs within the political field which I think I would be good at. The bad thing about our politics at the moment is that people are put in the wrong jobs. What’s the point of becoming Minister for paperclips if you have no interest in or knowledge of the paperclip world? It is possible in politics to say no and still have a future.

I’ll be honest and say that I was a sceptic at first. I was worried about opponents trying to rig the result, or candidates being able to pack a meeting. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, it has opened up the Conservative Party to a whole new group of people. I chaired the mayoral open primary in Bedford recently. There were more than 400 people there. For most it was the first time they had ever attended a political meeting, and they all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience. And they ended up voting for the strongest candidate. In the end, you have to trust the people to do the right thing.

I have a Jack Russell called Gio, and anyone who knows anything about Jack Russells knows that they like a bit of attention! I am a West Ham season ticket holder and a 13 handicap golfer. Well, that’s what the handicap certificate says, anyway. To be honest 20 would be more accurate. I am a voracious reader – mainly biographies. You can learn something from every book you read – especially life stories. I am addicted to my iPod, but if you don’t mind I won’t go into my musical tastes as it would guarantee I would lose the selection!

I offer total commitment, a powerful voice for a constituency in Westminster, the ability to communicate & will always be accessible. Vote Dale!

If I am elected as MP I will have an office in the House of Commons and an office in the constituency. I will hold a surgery every fortnight. I will spend at least one morning, afternoon or evening knocking on doors in order to gauge local opinion, but I will also use the internet to carry out regular surveys.

If you read my blog you will know that if I have something to say, I say it. I’m a Conservative because I agree with the party most of the time. But there are occasions when you disagree. I’d like to think I would say so if I didn’t.

Two recent examples. When Chris Grayling announced a new policy of confiscating mobile phones for teenagers. I thought it was wrong headed and said so publicly.

One has, however, to remember that I would be elected as a Conservative. I would therefore support Conservative policy much of the time. But if it came down to a choice between my constituency and my party, the constituency wins every time.

Also, serial rebels carry no weight. So you have to pick your issues.

The whips are a declining force. Whipping is necessary to an extent, if only to make sure the government gets its business through. But the days of iron whipping are over.

I applied to be candidate there because I really thought I could win it back. I ignored dire warnings from several people that the task would prove to be impossible. Indeed, LibDem Chief Executive Chris Rennard warned me not to go for it, saying “Norman Lamb will get a majority of 10,000”. I laughed out loud. But he proved right.

Most people know how difficult it is to dislodge LibDems once they have bedded themselved in. The mistake in North Norfolk was to lose the seat in the first place in 2001. It was the third time Norman Lamb had fought it.

By polling day, I had known for some time that winning was highly unlikely. I remember a day in February 2005 canvassing in the coastal village of Overstrand. Every single house we went to seem to deliver the same message: “Well, we’re really Conservatives but we’re going to vote for that nice Mr Lamb.” I remember going back to my house in Swanton Abbott that night and saying to John, “That’s it, I know now I can’t win.” If people like that weren’t going to vote for me, the game was up. The problem I had had all along was that Norman Lamb was (and is) essentially a Conservative. His and my views were almost indistinguishable on local issues. He was even vaguely Eurosceptic (for a LibDem). He had fought three elections and made it his business to be a good constituency MP.

My strategy had been to play him at his own game, and demonstrate that I too would be a good constituency representative – but one who could get things done by dint of being an MP for one of the two major parties . By the time the election campaign started I had undertaken a huge amount of constituency casework, and had got a very good reputation for taking up local campaigns and getting things done. I probably got more good local publicity in local press and radio than any other candidate in the country. We produced good literature and built up an excellent delivery network, but the fact remained – he was the MP and I was a candidate.

In retrospect I made too much of an effort at name recognition. It was a mistake to book a giant poster site (the only one in the constituency) for the few weeks before the election, and it was also a mistake to make a CD Rom and deliver it to every house. The money spent on those two things would have been far better spent on more newsletters and constituency-wide newspapers.

Two other things worked against me. The fact that I was quite often on TV, I originally thought would be a good thing – name recognition etc. But all it did was give people the impression I was in London all the time and not local. I could witter on about how I lived in the constituency – and I did – while Norman Lamb lived 20 miles away in Norwich, but a fat lot of good it did me.

So I expected to lose. It didn’t help that nationally the party wasn’t making any sort of breakthrough. Although Michael Howard had done his best, people were still in thrall to Tony Blair. Howard hadn’t been able to attract back those soft Conservative voters who had turned North Norfolk LibDem back in 2001. Nor it seemed, had I.

If I am honest, polling day was a disaster. We had set up a fifteen or so Committee rooms across the constituency and had teams of people knocking up. Time and again I kept being asked the same question: “Are you sure these knocking up slips are right? We seem to be knocking up LibDem voters”. Surely the agent hadn’t printed off the wrong codes? I kept asking myself. She and I had been at daggers drawn since the day of my selection. Let’s put it this way, she had gone out of her way to make clear that she favoured anyone but me. Half the local association wouldn’t work with her, and I seemed to spend much of my time mending fences with people whose noses she had put out of joint. After a row on day one of the campaign, she walked out, only to repeat the exercise later in the campaign. But surely, I thought, she wouldn’t have been so incompetent as to print out the wrong knocking up cards, would she? It was only six months later that I learned that she had gone round telling people she hadn’t even voted for me, that I began to wonder. Anyway, I digress.

So as I criss-crossed the constituency on polling day, I had a fairly good idea of what was to happen later that night, although not even I could have guessed that the result would be quite so bad.

As the polls closed, I went back to my cottage to change. I felt strangely numb. I craved that feeling most other candidates in marginal seats would have been feeling at that moment – the feeling that they were hours away from their biggest ever achievement.

I’ve never understood candidates who turn up at their counts after most of the hard work has been done. I wanted to be there to support my counting agents, and to make sure that nothing went wrong. In such a massive constituency it was always going to take a long time to get the ballot boxes in. And so it proved. Just after midnight, the other candidates started to arrive and I made it my business to chat to them all and their aides, many of whom I had got to know over the previous 18 months.

The first few boxes seemed OK from our point of view. For a fleeting moment I let myself wonder if I was being unduly pessimistic. But it was only when I sat down and did some counting myself that I realised that a defeat was definitely on the cards. The counting seemed to be going very slowly. I was keeping touch with outside events on a small hand sized portable TV. I remember Justine Greening winning. I think I even let out a cheer. I was sitting on a bench cradling this small, CD sized TV in my hands. One of the fringe candidates, who was dressed as a circus clown, came over and watched with me. He put his hand on my shoulder. The EDP picture next day was of this touching scene but was captioned: “A tearful Iain Dale is comforted by a clown”. I wasn’t tearful at all, I was watching David Dimbleby!

The moment came when the returning officer asked all the candidates and agents to gather round to go through the questionable votes. He then read out the figures. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Norman Lamb understandably struggled to contain himself. His majority had increased from 500 to 10,600. My initial reaction was to laugh in disbelief. To this day I struggle to believe it. One or two of my people suggested we request a bundle check, just to check that some votes hadn’t been put in the wrong piles. But before that could be requested the Agent had accepted the result. I too was not in a mood to question anything after hearing such a devastating piece of news. To be honest, my only thought was how I was going to get through the concession speech. Some weeks after the count I kept being told by my party workers: “There was something wrong at the count. We didn’t like to say anything at the time.” To this day I don’t know what they think happened.

As we waited for the formalities to begin Norman Lamb apologised to me for some rather nasty, homophobic comments made about me by one of his councillors. I thanked him and said I appreciated that he hadn’t run that sort of campaign.

Norman was then asked to the platform and he gave a gracious speech in which he made clear he had at some points over the previous 18 months feared the worst. It was then my turn. I have inherited my mother’s tendency to have a good cry at the worst possible moment. Even an episode of Emmerdale has been known to set me off, so as I climbed up on to the stage I made sure I breathed very deeply and make sure that I didn’t catch the eye of Deborah Slattery, my campaign manager and loyal friend. I knew she would be howling her eyes out.

It remains a speech I am proud of. I got through it intact, thanked everyone who needed to be thanked and paid tribute to Norman Lamb. I was told afterwards by several LibDem and Labour supporters that they were quite moved by it. As I left the stage I have a vague recollection of Norman Lamb putting his arm around me!

I didn’t lose because North Norfolk rejected a gay candidate. I lost because the Lib Dems ran a relentless campaign to persuade Labour supporters to vote tactically. I lost because our national campaign, though highly professional and slick, did not ignite the fires of optimism among an electorate sick of personal insults and negativity. It may not be racist to talk about immigration, but it is perhaps not clever to put the words “racist” and “Conservative” on the same poster. And I lost because the Lib Dem MP had a huge personal vote, far beyond anything I’ve encountered anywhere else.

A candidate is perhaps not the ideal person to understand fully the reasons for a shattering defeat. Others can judge that, and many have offered their twopennyworth over the last four years. All I know is that I can look myself in the mirror and know that I could not have done more. I almost bankrupted myself, put in far more hours than most other candidates I know and in many ways ran a textbook campaign. Of course I made mistakes, and I have alluded to some of them here, but my biggest mistake was not to listen to those who advised me not to go for this particular seat in the first place! LibDem chief executive, Chris Rennard, who knows a thing or two about these things, was one of them. He told me before I was selected that he expected Norman Lamb to get a five figure majority. I thought I knew better. I won’t make that particular mistake again!

Other than perhaps the initial decision, I have few regrets. I thoroughly enjoyed the 18 months up to the election, even if I hated the campaign itself. I met some wonderful people and would like to think that even as a candidate I made a bit of a difference to some people’s lives. I’ve just looked up my blogposts from that period. touched post in particular sums up why, despite some of the terrible things said about me on some websites in the immediate aftermath of the election, I did not totally lose heart.

The most important thing is to learn from what life – and the electorate – throws at you.