LONDON-- Prime Minister David Cameron sealed a surprise election win by persuading Britons to choose the security of modestly rising living standards over an implausible pretender many feared could become the puppet of Scottish nationalists.
Blending the promise of "the good life" fuelled 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 centre-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 savoured 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."
REUTERS
