Weeks before the election that will be held on Thursday, and which barely any Tories then expected their party to win, one of their candidates, Nicholas Boles, whom no one knew, spoke at a fringe event at the Conservative spring forum - and woke everybody up. A youngish man of patrician height and old-fashioned posh accent, he came across as cheery yet earnest, avoided pre-written jokes, didn't wear a tie and generally had the informality that characterises successful modern politicians (Bill Clinton, Tony Blair or George Bush) but which the Tory party, even today, doesn't seem to manage to show.

He was speaking in a quarter-full hotel conference room on a deadly subject: "the future of local government". But it suited him. Like Clinton once more, Boles is a wonk who loves talking to normal people. He chairs the Tory think-tank Policy Exchange, but he is also running for parliament in the Labour-held marginal seat of Hove and Portslade.