Pratt, very much a Liberal in the 19th century tradition, had been MP for Linlithgowshire from 1913-1918 and a whip in Lloyd George’s wartime coalition. He was knighted in 1922. He did not fight the 1922 general election, though he did try unsuccessfully to get back into Parliament at different constituencies through the 20s. He finally left the Liberal Party and contested Manchester Hulme in 1931 as a member of Oswald Mosley’s New Party but he does not seem to have followed Mosley into the Blackshirts and mention of his New Party phase was omitted from his Times obituary.