Pub owner reveals shock at winning 300 votes in the general election

A Richmond pub owner has expressed his surprise at receiving 349 votes in the general election, despite it being an exercise in “guerrilla marketing”.

Chris French, who represented the Mitre TW9 party for the Richmond Park constituency, came sixth out of seven candidates, beating the Social Democratic Party’s Richard Harrison by 116 votes.

French has been running the Mitre in London’s Richmond for the past nine years, having started his career in hospitality 33 years ago, washing dishes.

He first had the idea to put his 100-cover pub on the ballot paper during the 2019 general election, but only committed to his plans last year.

French was “shocked” when he secured his candidacy ahead of last week’s election, but even more surprised at the vote count.

“I’m not even in contact with that many people – it’s not like I have a little black book of everybody who is coming to the pub and I can call on thousands of people,” he added.

French announced his candidacy on Instagram and sent out a light-hearted WhatsApp message to locals, but nothing more.  

He decided to run in the general election to give his pub a bit of exposure, as the Mitre has always struggled with its location due to not being in the centre of town.

“You don’t stumble across the Mitre, you have to make the time and effort and probably walk past other pubs to get to us. There are people that have lived in Richmond for 20 years that come into the pub and tell us we didn’t even know the Mitre even existed, because we’re so far off the beaten track,” French said.

Although the impact of the campaign on footfall is skewed by the Euro 2024 tournament, French had a “really busy” service on the night of the election, with people coming straight from the polling station.

“We were never expecting to open the doors on Friday and suddenly have 1,000 people come and see the pub, but I was hoping now that people are aware of it, we might just get those customers into the pub that might never have heard of it,” he said.

“Some of them would have known about [my candidacy] but there was a lot of people that didn’t know about it. The Labour candidate and all of her merry band of helpers came down as well. We put on the exit polls at 10 o’clock and they all celebrated the Conservatives losing and Labour winning, and it was just a really good night in here and it was almost like the first time in years everybody felt happy.”

He did not shoot down the possibility of running in another election, considering the costs of standing for a seat in parliament are much lower than launching an advertising campaign for the pub.

“If we deliver leaflets, they normally charge about 10p a leaflet, so if you do 77,000, that’s £7,700. Then maybe another £3,000 or £4,000 flyering, so you are looking at between £10,000 and £12,500. Whereas for £500 [the cost to stand], I got somebody else to do it for me. No policies, no manifesto, no campaigning, no canvassing. It was simply guerrilla marketing, that’s all that it was,” he said.

“My mission was accomplished before the polling stations opened because I was in the newspapers and I was on 77,000 ballot papers. I’d won what I had set out to do.”

Image: Shutterstock