Lord Ashcroft’s message to the Tories: you’re doomed in 2015

I’m at the ConservativeHome ‘Victory 2015’ conference today, which after Lord Ashcroft’s presentation should perhaps be renamed Annihilation 2015. He started the day with one of his mega expensive polls of marginal seats, a survey of 19,200 suggesting the Tories would lose 93 seats to the Labour Party alone, giving Miliband a total of 367 MPs and a majority of 84. ‘I don’t want to see a Labour majority of four, let alone 84, but I hope this puts the challenge into some sort of perspective,’ Ashcroft said. The perspective being: give up! Go home! Wait for 2020! The noble lord didn’t quite put it like that (update: you can now read his account here) but here are his main points. As James Forsyth first revealed, the Tories have a 40/40 strategy: to defend 40 seats and take 40 more (20 from Liberal Democrats). It should be a 90/40 strategy if Ashcroft is right.