From Chapter 1 of Flash for Freedom by George MacDonald Fraser (1971):

. . "You're out of your senses," says I. "Who would elect me?"

d

. . "Anybody," snaps he. "A pug ape frae the zoological gardens could win a seat in this country, if it was managed right." Buttering me up I could see.

d

. . "But I'm not a politician," says I "I know nothing about it, and care even less."

. . "Then ye're the very man, and ye'll find plenty o' kindred spirits at Westminster,"

says he, and when I hooted at him he flew into a tremendous passion that drove the females weeping from the room. I left him raging.

. . But when I came to think about it, do you know, it didn't seem quite so foolish after all. He was a sharp man, old Morrison, and he could see it would do no harm to have a Member in the family, what with his business interests and so on. Not that I'd be much use to him that I could see―I didn't know, then, that he had been maturing some notion of buying as many as a dozen seats. I'd no idea, you see, of just how wealthy the old rascal was, and how he was scheming to use that wealth for political ends. You won't find much in the history books about John Morrison, Lord Paisley, but you can take my word for it that it was men like him who pulled the strings in the old Queen's time, while the political puppets danced. They still do, and always will.

Comments:

The story is set in 1848, but the controls of political life (and the promotion of policy) have hardly changed. Only the Swiss political system, from all I can see, is proof against the 'political puppets' dancing as they used to.

Morrison was said to be from Paisley, and speaks as such from the hinterlands of Glasgae.