About Cameron: I have had already from almost the beginning of his leadership a feeling that he is like a blindfolded child beating the air with a stick in hope to hit the piñata so that it would break and there would be a shower of candies. Cameron doesn’t have any vision or knowledge of the direction where he should go, either, but he pokes at every direction just in the case that he would win the prise.

As for this stuff about 1989 and the first time we’ve not won from second, If you take Newbury as an example we had nearly three months to campaign, we controlled the local council and had come second at parliamentary elections in Newbury constituency since the early 1960s - whereas at Ealing Southall we had three weeks to campaign, had only come second for the first time at the previous general election and had only one councillor.

Not surprisingly the little bugger didn’t pay up.

James, this is an excellent analysis. No amount of bluster from an out of his depth agent who “folded” when put under proper analysis can hide that htis was disastrous for the Tories.

Grant Shapps said repeatedly on TV that third parties always get squeezed. I know he failed to repeat that here as it is a lie and patently untrue (just look at Sedgefield).

If the Tories ONLY success was stopping the Lib Dems winning then that is an odd sort of success and hardly a sign of impending victory in a general election.

But I’d love to see them raise their game because it would force us to raise our game too. For someone to change however, first they have to recognise they have a problem. I just don’t see the Tories having that level of self-awareness, and my occasional blog posts aren’t going to change that.