Grant Shapps has built an activists’ team to fight for the Tories in Newark – and in 2015

The CCHQ strategy is to never to talk about strategy, but Tory chairman Grant Shapps cannot hide his excitement on this Saturday afternoon. Just a week after the Conservative Party came third in a national poll for the first time ever, 650 Tory activists are out campaigning in the Newark by-election. That is enough boots on the ground to deliver 40,000 leaflets and canvass the entire Nottinghamshire constituency ahead of Thursday’s vote. ‘I haven’t seen anything like this since Crewe,’ one seasoned activist tells me, referring to David Cameron’s narrative shaping by-election victory over
Gordon Brown in 2008.

Shapps is particularly pleased with a text from the Telegraph’s Dan Hodges, said to be the PM’s favourite columnist, who gets in touch to tell him that Labour figures are baffled by the noticeable beefing up of the Tory ground machine. As chairman, Shapps has staked his reputation on turning around the party’s field operation, which was in poor shape in 2010:

‘I think the trend has been obvious for quite some time – that politics is moving away from the treasurer and secretary of the local association organising three other people to come out.