THE tears and disbelief did not last long amongst the Tory faithful at Conservative Central Office this morning. The recriminations quickly followed, with potential leadership candidates queuing up to pass the blame, even before the first result had been declared.
The Union Jack appeared to be at half mast outside the Tory campaign headquarters. At 10 p.m. the cameras and media from around the world were poised to capture the historic end to 18 years of Conservative rule. With the announcement of the exit polls, predicting a massive Labour landslide, Tory activists drowned their sorrows and refused to speak to the press.
"We always thought the polls were wrong. We were told completely different things on the doorstep, obviously this time people were lying to us, rather than the pollsters," admitted one Tory worker.
Just an hour later, the deputy Prime Minister, Mr Michael Heseltine, arrived and attempted to rally the troops. Unfortunately his arrival coincided with the pro European, Mrs Edwina Currie, urging him to stand in the ensuing leadership battle.
Asked by The Irish Times whether he would heed his colleague's appeal, Mr Heseltine appeared surprised by Mrs Currie's faith in him and shook his head.
"If the polls are right, and we have lost, then there have to be a lot of questions asked and a lot of answers produced. We have absolutely nothing to gain from a debate when one person says one thing and one says another. It maybe best for the media, but ills not the best for the Conservative party," he added.
However one Conservative party source admitted that Mr Blair had led a "brilliant campaign" and that their canvassers had predicted large scale losses. "We've had worrying signs during the campaign from canvassers who have been told by people they would vote Conservative but were not looking them in the eye."
Although the Tory hierarchy refused to concede defeat, the post mortem began immediately after the first result was declared. Clearly still shocked by the apparent scale of the defeat, a senior campaign strategist spoke frankly to the media, suggesting that Labour should have won the election in 1992 but the British "did not want a Welshman like Kinnock in Number 10".
Sipping a glass of red wine, he refused to speculate who should succeed Mr Major but appealed to the party to "pick itself up" and start fighting again.
"There will be no honeymoon period for the Labour Party, we will be off the starting block very quickly to ensure that the first 100 days are as hard as possible," he warned.
Next to arrive at the "celebration" party, was the Welsh Secretary, Mr William Hague and another potential leadership candidate. Perhaps surprisingly he appeared to concede defeat after just four seats had been declared. Maybe he was attempting to prove he could be decisive.
"Clearly the appearance of division hasn't helped," he acknowledged. "The feeling of time for a change has been difficult to combat.
By 1 a.m., with the Tories still failing to win a seat, a spate of Tory MPs rounded on the pro European, Chancellor Ken Clarke, accusing him of losing the election because he persuaded Mr major not to rule out monetary union.
"Kenneth Clarke was personally responsible for the poor Conservative general election campaign. By forcing John Major to paint himself into a corner on Europe by threatening to resign unless any digression from the `wait and see' policy was ruled out, Kenneth Clarke denied John Major the room for manoeuvre which would have allowed a vote winning complete rejection of a single currency during the campaign," complained Mr Nicholas Winteron, the MP for Macclesfield.
However true to form, Mr Clarke robustly defended himself, blaming the Eurosceptics for ensuring that Europe dominated the campaign rather than the economy.
"Most people that have worked for the Conservative Party would say they hope the parliamentary party in the next Parliament behaves rather more sensibly than the parliamentary party did sometimes in the last Parliament. The idea that almost 50 per cent of the public are voting Labour because we are not right wing and Eurosceptic enough is a theory that Nicholas Winterton can cling to, but I think that most of the general public will regard that as rather unlikely," he bluntly stated.