Now that the election is over, let the arguments and explosions begin

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

‘He who controls the past, controls the future’ as George Orwell reminded us. This means that a battle breaks out in every party after every election to explain the result, to determine which policies helped and which policies hindered. Win or lose, the various factions inside parties race to establish a narrative that is helpful to their cause.

Straight after Labour’s landslide win in 1997, it was declared that ‘we campaigned as New Labour and we will govern as New Labour’. The Blairites were so eager to establish this point that they even considered putting it into the Queen’s speech. The message to the left of the party was clear: the massive majority was a result of the new outlook that Tony Blair had imposed on the party and in government there would be no going back to the party’s traditional positions.

If David Cameron has kissed the Queen’s hand by the time you read this (The Spectator went to press with the result hideously uncertain), he will be tempted to deliver his own version of this message. Cameron ran for the leadership in 2005 on the slogan ‘change to win’. His supporters will be keen to hail any victory as vindication of the Cameron project. He will wish to say, ‘We changed, and we won.’ The implication will be ‘stick with me, I’m a winner and if we lurch to the right, we’ll lose’.

Disgruntled backbenchers also have their counter-narrative ready: Labour’s failures meant that this was an election the Tory party should have won comfortably. For the race to be so close is an indictment of the modernising strategy. The party won the economic battle with Labour in the opening days of the campaign thanks to a classic Conservative argument: don’t put up taxes, cut wasteful spending instead.