Is civil war breaking out in the Conservative party?

As the Conservative party prepares for its leaders statement at 2.30pm, the recriminations are already taking place with the grassroots pushing back on the Notting Hill set.

About an hour ago, Spectator editor, Fraser Nelson, told the BBC:

“There is not very much happiness among Conservative ranks … the campaign seems to have reduced Tory support rather than increased it and the party is looking very weak now”.

Conservative Home editor, Tim Montgomerie, said, “The grassroots wanted a very different campaign from the Tory leadership and the Tory leadership told us all they knew what they were doing”.

The Cameroons have certainly been guilty of hubris. Last night, Politics Home reported that the Conservatives were “confident of overall majority”:

“A well-placed source within the Conservative campaign machine has told PoliticsHome that early indications are looking good and that he expects an overall Tory majority.

“The indications they are receiving are that their voters are turning out, that the advantage in the marginal seats is holding up, and that a number of the lower down Labour target seats will fall their way, making an overall majority likely.

Meanwhile, the “twats” inside CCHQ were cocksure in their predictions:

• Early in the evening, Press Secretary Henry Macrory shared the sentiment tweeting: “RT @TimMontgomerie ConHome sources say Tories will do better than exit poll http://is.gd/bXqxg“

• Soon after Sam Freedman, the special adviser on education in the political unit, tweeted, “RT @fivethirtyeight: If exit poll seat calculations are based on uniform swing, our non-uniform model would instead project ~340 Tory seats on those numbers.”

• Deputy Head of New Media, Sam Coates, was similarly bullish when the first result came in tweeting, “Swing from Labour to Conservatives in Sunderland South was 8.4%! Bodes well for other Labour fortresses”

• Macrory also got excited when the first big gain of the night came in, he tweeted: “Kingswood,Bristol, is just the sort of seat Cons need to win to gain overall majority”

• Macrory also persistently pushed the line that the Tories would get more seats than Labour and the Lib Dems combined (which doesn’t appear to be the case in the final reckoning). Just after 3am, he tweeted, “Conservatives currently have 128 seats – 3 more than Lab and LDs together”, later, “Conservatives currently hold 173 seats – six more than Lab & LDs together”, and then “RT @TimMontgomerie ConHome sources expect to get 310 seats; the magic number to be able to out-vote Lab and LibDems”

The clear lesson of the night was provided by Coates himself who tweeted, “No tweeting from @uklabour @labourpress @libdempress @libdems tonight.” Perhaps there was a reason for that.