Lord Ashcroft throws book at his own party

Behind closed doors at the Tory conference yesterday, Theresa May and her party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin held an inquest into the dire General election campaign.

The official report by former chairman Sir eric Pickles probably wasn’t much use to them, having been dubbed a whitewash.

For what really went wrong, the party high command should turn to The Lost Majority, published by former Tory treasurer Lord Ashcroft. The 106- page book doesn’t pull its punches.

Ashcroft’s team asked 20,000 voters after the election for one word to sum up the Tories.

Some cited words like ‘strength’, ‘stability’ and ‘ toughness’, but there were more negatives than positives. ‘Rich’, ‘liars’, and ‘nasty’ were most common.

Ashcroft, who is a staunch Mrs May supporter, also published Call Me dave, revealing the suggestion that david Cameron inserted a part of his anatomy into a pig’s head in a student initiation ceremony. Cameron denied it.

But, writing about his new book, he says: ‘Some words had to be removed because this is a family publication.’

For Labour, the words which featured most were ‘ fair’ and ‘fairness’, while the negatives concerned ‘competence’.

There was no cheer for Sir Vince Cable’s Libdems. The words most associated with them? ‘Weak’ and ‘nothing’. Quite.