THE COUNT:The mood in the count centre was an anxiously uncertain one, writes MARY FITZGERALDin Witney, Oxfordshire
THE PEOPLE who are at home in Witney, a sleepy market town on the edge of the Cotswolds, are not accustomed to fuss and excitement.
They may have some celebrities in their midst, such as actor Ben Kingsley, who has a house nearby – but for the most part the good burghers of Witney are content to quietly go about their lives in this postcard-perfect corner of Oxfordshire.
Thursday night was different. That night Witney, David Cameron’s home constituency, found itself transformed into one of the ground zeros of Britain’s most closely fought elections in decades. Media crews flocked to the town to track the Tory leader’s every move and facial expression as night turned into dawn and results tumbled in from across the country. In the end, the fizz of anticipation dissipated into something of a damp squib as it became clear that all the predictions of a hung parliament looked likely to be true.
For Cameron, the long day’s journey into night began with a jog before breakfast, followed by a two-hour wait before he could vote. The delay was due to protesters who had climbed on to the roof of the polling station to unfurl a banner reading: “Britons know your place. Vote Eton – vote Tory.” After spending some hours chopping wood at his home, and taking a bizarrely premature call of congratulations from California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cameron emerged with his pregnant wife Samantha shortly after midnight to join friends and supporters at the New Inn, a pub owned by the chairman of the local Tories. An hour later, they swept into the Windrush Leisure Centre, where the counters had long been at work.
Cameron sat at a table with Andy Coulson, the former News Of The World editor turned Tory communications supremo, as they hammered out a speech that would later prove anything but triumphant. Also milling about were Cameron’s rather improbable rivals in the Witney race – the grandly titled Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky, a historian, novelist and distant cousin of Leo, who stood for Ukip; the rotund, flamboyantly dressed Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Alan Hope, aka Howling “Laud” Hope; and self-styled “comedy terrorist” Aaron Barschak, who hit the headlines in 2003 for gatecrashing Prince William’s birthday party dressed as Osama bin Laden. Barschak, who attended the count dressed as Jesus, explained he was running to highlight the plight of asylum seekers.
To no one’s surprise, Cameron was declared the comfortable winner in a true-blue Tory seat, once held by Douglas Hurd and Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, before he defected to Labour. His keenly awaited 3am acceptance speech was very much in keeping with the anxiously uncertain mood of the night.
Picking his words carefully, Cameron said it was clear that Labour had “lost its mandate to govern”. People had voted for change, which would “require new leadership”. But the Tory leader stopped short of claiming victory, saying instead that “whatever happens, we will stand ready to do all that we can to bring that leadership”.
Cameron, like everybody there, knew only too well the contest was at that stage far from over.