Conservative party

Jim Messina is the American elections guru who got the general election right. Hired by the Conservatives as a strategy adviser in 2013, the Tories hoped he would emulate Barack Obama's 2012 re-election strategy. And so he did. Whereas British pollsters consistently missed that the Tories were moving into pole position, Messina’s internal numbers showed for weeks they were on course to be the largest party. Speaking to The Spectator from Washington, D.C, he reveals that he was not at all surprised when the BBC exit poll showed the Tories were going to trounce Labour. ‘We predicted 312 seats that morning to Lynton [Crosby] and 316 was right in line with that, so it just kind of validated what we’d been seeing,’ he says.

David Cameron is holding the first all-Tory Cabinet meeting since 1997 today, and he is expected to emphasise his mission for this Government to be characterised by 'blue-collar Conservatism' in which the Tories become the natural party of working people. It is, some hope, David Cameron's chance to show, finally, what he stands for in politics. Previously when the Tory leader focused on a defining brand and a moral mission, it seemed a bit wishy-washy and insincere, with a lot of hugging of dogs and green trees. Then in this election campaign Cameron ended up being brutally pragmatic, not so much giving voters a reason to vote Conservative, but a reason to stop the SNP holding sway over a Labour government.

Mr S previously reported that there were plans to donate the Guardian's election sweepstake to a foodbank. The decision was made after the organisers assumed that none of their employees could have possibly correctly guessed that there would be a Conservative majority. Now, word reaches Steerpike that the matter didn't stop there. In fact, one employee at Guardian HQ was so bold as to reply saying that they had in fact come close to guessing the result, with an estimate of 324 Conservative seats and 227 Labour seats (the final result being 331 to the Tories and 232 to Labour). Not everyone at the publication was willing to accept this person's victory and instead it was suggested that they ought to 'read the room'.

Seemingly missing the democratic process that returned a Tory government with a majority and an increased share of the vote, the hard left took to the streets of Westminster over the weekend to protest against austerity. However, has 'austerity' really hurt all of the protesters who took part? Look closely at the box one used to make their 'no cuts' sign: A 50 inch Sony LED TV that retails at over £600. The face of modern Britain's dispossessed. Meanwhile rumours abound that Ed Miliband has already found a new job following his resignation as Labour leader: https://twitter.com/neon_black1871/status/597120242523967488 However, this is at best a short-lived career change as Miliband has since been spied on his way to Ibiza.

News has just broken that Iain Duncan Smith is to remain as Secretary for State for Work and Pensions. Now, normally a Cabinet Minister remaining in post would not be news but there had been repeated rumours that IDS would be shuffled out of this job. The fact that IDS is staying tells us, I think, two things. First, that even with £12 billion more of welfare cuts needed, Cameron wants the policy to be as much about saving lives as money. Second, the decision not to shuffle IDS shows a sensibly cautious approach to party management. Moving IDS, a former leader, from the job he loves doing would have caused upset. By keeping him in place, Cameron ensures the continued loyal presence round the Cabinet table of someone trusted on the Eurosceptic right of the party.

Up until Thursday night, everything that David Cameron and George Osborne had done in government had had to be agreed by the Liberal Democrats. Every policy had to go through the ‘Quad’, the coalition government’s decision making body made up of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander. That doesn’t have to happen anymore. As one Downing Street figure says: ‘It is all completely different now, we can power forward with what we want to do. There’s no need for everything to be watered down. It’s invigorating’. Not having to manage a coalition, also frees up huge amounts of time for both Cameron and the Number 10 operation. It would be well advised to spend a good chunk of this time, say half, on managing the party.

How will Ed Miliband manage tomorrow if Labour does end up the second largest party but with a viable ‘anti-Tory alliance’ in the House of Commons? The Tories are trying to craft a narrative that such a government would be illegitimate, and David Cameron will give a statement early on Friday. But there is a theory developing among some Tories who rate Miliband’s strategic skills that he could be about to produce his own clever game-changer too. He could be about to offer a significant devolution of powers to the regions, a huge transfer of power to Scotland and Wales, the elected Senate of the Nations and Regions that was promised in its manifesto as a replacement for the House of Lords, and electoral reform.

Which party is the most negative in this election campaign? All of them have spent a great deal of time being negative about their opponents’ apparent negativity, claiming that only their own party is running a positive campaign about the future for this country, and so on. But it’s easy to make grand claims, and even easier not to measure up to them at all. To give us an answer, academics at British Election Leaflet Project at the University of Nottingham have analysed leaflets from the parties in this campaign. They looked at 1,300 pieces of election literature from nearly 300 constituencies. All the leaflets were uploaded on electionleaflets.org. Their findings are quite surprising.