Reg Keys was an ambulance paramedic for 19 years in Solihull before retiring to Llanuwchllyn, Bala in North Wales. In the 2005 UK general election, he stood against the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in the Sedgefield constituency. Keys declared at the outset of the campaign that he had been a Labour Party voter and was still basically socialist, but that he was seeking election as a candidate opposed to Blair's policy on the Iraq War. He claimed that by electing him, voters could keep the Labour Party in power but with Gordon Brown as the likely Prime Minister rather than Blair. Former Independent MP Martin Bell urged the other parties to withdraw their candidates as removing a supporter of the war from office would send a message to President Bush and other World Leaders who had supported him. During the campaign, UK newspaper "The Guardian"'s Stuart Jeffries asked Keys, "Is it difficult to be a political candidate in these circumstances, when you are still clearly grieving?", to which he replied "Yes it is. […] I feel, though, that I have a responsibility to Tom. I keep going back to the words of a widow of a man who died on the "Kursk" […]. She said: 'If you betray your country you are a traitor and you will go to prison. But if your country betrays you, what can you do?' I think I have an answer to that: we can use our vote to get rid of those people who betrayed my son and other men like him. That's what I want the people of Sedgefield to do."