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 Blending the promise of "the good life" fueled by a strong
economic recovery with fear of resurgent Scottish separatists
calling the shots in a country they want to break up, Cameron
steamrolled the opposition Labour Party and won his party's first
outright majority in 23 years.
"We've had a positive response to a positive campaign about
safeguarding our economy," said Cameron, as if he had always
expected to win so emphatically.
The truth was different.
Before it became clear he had won, some in his center-right
Conservative Party feared he had run a dull campaign that failed to
shift apparently tied opinion polls.
Others in the party, famous for ruthlessly junking predecessors such
as triple election-winner Margaret Thatcher, thought his days were
numbered even if he won because he was unlikely to win big.
He forgot the name of his football team at one point, was accused of
dodging TV debates, and had sometimes struggled to hold his party
together.
Seeking to lift his game, a gesticulating and shirt-sleeved Cameron
vehemently described himself as "pumped up" at one campaign
appearance widely derided by critics. But that had to be set against
Labour leader Ed Miliband's much-ridiculed efforts to convince
voters that "Hell yes, I'm tough enough".
Cameron, guided by his Australian campaign adviser Lynton Crosby,
spent six weeks hammering home just two messages: Vote Conservative
to secure economic recovery, and stop Labour coming to power backed
by Scottish nationalists.
Crosby's strategy was that "you can't fatten a pig on market day".
That meant voters were bombarded with a message in the hope that
relentless repetition would help it "take".
"The Lynton Crosby strategy came through in the end," one
Conservative activist in Cameron's Oxfordshire constituency, who
declined to be named, told Reuters.
As he addressed supporters on Friday, Cameron savored proving his
doubters wrong.
"The pundits got it wrong, the pollsters got it wrong, the
commentators got it wrong," he said. "This is the sweetest victory
of them all."
SCOTTISH WRECKERS
Conservative staffers said they were surprised by the scale of their
victory.
Many put it down to English horror at the prospect of Scottish
nationalists wielding influence over swathes of the United Kingdom
which they still want to leave despite losing an independence
referendum last year.
"It’s got to be the Scottish National Party angle," one jubilant
Conservative activist who declined to be named said. "More than any
line in any election, that one has really cut through to people we
meet on the doorstep."
The SNP didn't run on an independence ticket this time, drawing in
voters who want to stay in the United Kingdom but want a stronger
Scottish voice in British politics.
It was a strategy that won them a landslide, securing 56 of
Scotland's 59 parliamentary seats.
It repeatedly offered to help Labour come to power "to lock out
Cameron". Miliband ruled out deals with the SNP, but failed to
dispel voters' doubts he would relent and make a pact with the
nationalists.
For many in England that was a reason not to vote Labour.
Though it didn't initially appear to have the impact he had hoped
for, Cameron's economic record gave him a lead over Miliband on
economic competence.
The fact that real wage growth only picked up in the months before
the election caused jitters in the Cameron camp. But he was able to
deliver record low inflation, high employment and cheap mortgages.
And crucially, he told Britons they would feel the benefits of the
recovery if they gave him another five years.
"This somehow actually had more traction (than people thought),"
said Grants Shapps, Conservative party chairman.
Cameron's pledges to cut welfare spending sharply angered Labour
supporters. But they went down well with many voters who resented
claimants regularly portrayed as feckless parasites.
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'RED ED'
But perhaps Cameron's best asset was Miliband, nicknamed "Red Ed" by
his detractors.
He began the campaign cast by right-leaning newspapers as a socially
awkward geek with neither gravitas nor policies. His party had left
Britain with its biggest peacetime deficit when it left office in
2010.
Miliband tried to repair Labour's battered reputation for fiscal
responsibility but refused to say it had borrowed too much, angering
some voters. He forgot key passages of a speech on the economy and
immigration at Labour's last conference before the election.
And in a move that dismayed some supporters, he commissioned a stone
tablet engraved with his election promises which critics ironically
compared to Moses' Ten Commandments.
During the campaign, Miliband was perceived to have outperformed low
expectations and to have improved his ratings.
But it wasn't enough.
"His ratings improved but they are still much below David Cameron in
terms of competence," said Ben Page, chief executive of pollster
Ipsos MORI.
Perhaps most importantly, Miliband's big gamble didn't come off. One
of his predecessors, Tony Blair, had led Labour to three election
victories by anchoring the party in the center ground. But Miliband
shifted to the left, promising to raise taxes and spending and to
intervene in markets to right what he perceived as unfair
imbalances.
"We failed to offer a compelling vision of the future," said
Tristram Hunt, Labour's education spokesman.
Some blamed David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser, who helped
coordinate Labour's campaign.
"To a certain extent he didn't succeed in creating a campaign that
got to everybody across the country and that's what you're going to
need to do if you're going to get into government again," said
Jacqui Smith, a former Labour minister.
COALITION PARTNER WOES
Cameron was also boosted by a collapse in support for his coalition
partner, the Liberal Democrats.
Opinion polls had suggested the centrist party, with whom Cameron
had governed since 2010, had paid a heavy price for going into
government with him.
Many supporters felt it had betrayed its principles by going into
coalition with Cameron and could not forgive it for what they saw as
a U-turn on student tuition fees.
It was expected to do badly, but not even its fiercest critics
predicted it would win just eight seats, down from 57 in 2010.
The Conservatives won 27 seats from the Liberal Democrats, claiming
the scalps of two of their senior cabinet ministers, Business
Secretary Vince Cable and Energy Secretary Ed Davey.
Equally, a potential threat to Cameron from the anti-EU UK
Independence Party never really materialized.
It had threatened to split the Conservative vote and it did win
millions of votes, but Britain's first-past-the-post electoral
system meant it won only one seat in the end.
But it was Labour's collapse in Scotland, a traditional stronghold,
that lost Miliband the most seats. In 2010, Labour won 41 seats
there. This time it won just one.
(Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan and William James; Editing
by Guy Faulconbridge and Janet Lawrence)
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