David Cameron given hero’s welcome by stunned MPs
The 1922 Tory backbench committee prides itself on its autonomy and leaves leaders outside waiting to be invited in to the room even if they have just led the party to an unexpected majority.
It meant David Cameron was forced to stand around taking questions from waiting journalists. He admitted he had a lot more jobs to divvy up than he’d expected. He said the tightness of the polls had inevitably led everyone to criticise his campaign for not shifting opinion and led people to think that Ed Miliband’s campaign was working. He admitted that he’d had text contact with Nick Clegg on polling day and that politics was a cruel business.
Asked what was the sweetest victory of the night he appeared to single out Rochester and Strood.
He said that winning when UKIP were on 14% was a particular surprise. He poo pooed the idea that neck and neck opinion polls had helped his cause even if they had misled the public. “Ah, he said, the ‘we woz robbed’ argument.” But his own strategists think the narrow polls did help. And they think the last days of the campaign saw more and more ex Labour 2010 voters coming over to the Tories in the key Con/Lab marginals where Tories achieved a swing from Labour.
This could’ve been the worst meeting of David Cameron’s political life, struggling to stay alive and in the job. Plenty of those cheering in the room behind me chatted about political assassination if he came back from the election with fewer than 290 seats. Plenty thought the PM would try another deal with the Lib Dems and they’d vote against him at this meeting on that. Instead, he is getting loud applause and desk banging in a crammed room of sweaty individuals who can’t quite believe what’s happened.