Will Tory triumphalism be their undoing?

Martin Bright writes on his New Statesman blog:

I was sitting on a panel in the Sky News studios at 2.30am this morning when something horrible flashed up on the giant screen in front of us. Not the tally of lost seats or the projections of what the night's results would mean if reproduced at a general election - though these were bad enough.

No. It was the sight of the Tory leader and Francis Maude enjoying a smugfest at their Millbank headquarters, all specially filmed for Webcameron. And this was just the local elections. Imagine what a general election victory would be like.

And there are plenty examples of such smugness about already. Here are a couple.

Iain Dale has floated the idea of Stanley Johnson succeeding Boris as MP for Henley, and Jonathan Isaby at the Telegraph has enthusiastically taken it up:

The man himself does nothing to suppress the idea.

"Put it this way, I'm still on the candidates' list," the 67-year-old grandfather of eleven and former Conservative MEP has just told me.

"Obviously it would be up to the Henley association as to whether they invite me for interview, but I don't see why I shouldn't put in for it."

Johnson Senior stood in Teignbridge unsuccessfully at the 2005 general election and would be a delightful addition to the House of Commons.

Maybe this is all tongue in cheek, but by-elections where the sitting member has voluntarily walked away from the seat are always difficult for the defending party. (That is why I will believe in Boris's resignation when I see it.) Even in Henley, the idea that Stanley should be the next MP because he is a Sound Chap may not go down well.

And over at the Independent Simon Carr, usually so healthily cynical about all politicians, has come over all floppy and Brideshead about the new Tory leadership:

Some years ago, just before the last general election I was watching Boris performing in the Oxford Union, doing well in his natural habitat.

Later, in the street, among the criminal obesity and facial metal, I couldn't see how Boris could ever appeal to such a world. And I wrote that the Conservative Party didn't have a chance of being elected while Boris was a member of it.

I eat those words, and very nice they taste. Whoever wins in London, the ultimate amateur has made a fantastic breakthrough. It must shatter the world view of Ed Balls and other class warriors that the concept "Tory toff" no longer has the power to move mountains.

It's Gentlemen vs Players, and for good or ill, for the first time in a generation, the Gentlemen are in the game.

We must make allowances: Carr was himself a star of the Oxford Union as a young man and we are all entitled to our personal nostalgia. And the idea that describing someone as a "toff" is enough to dismiss their views is pretty silly. Where would it leave Tony Blair, Nick Clegg or Ed Balls himself?

But come off it, Simon. The idea that the self-important pups of the Oxford Union are too civilised for the rest of us is nonsense. Evelyn Waugh may have gloried in the exploits of the Bullingdon, but he never presented them as moral exemplars.

Nor would anyone who has read Andrew Gimson's biography of him easily describe Boris Johnson as a gentleman. There is something shabby about his act in all senses of the word.

Returning to Stanley, one in the 1970s the Johnson family - boys and girls - all had long blond hair. And Stanley's was the longest and blondest of all. Seen en masse, they resembled the Midwich Cuckoos run to seed.

So Tories beware. Your revival under David Cameron has been based upon at least the appearance of modesty. Much more of this nonsense and the public will remember how much it hates what you really stand for.