Barack Obama rang Conservative headquarters on election night with a mistaken but reassuring message for Theresa May because Labour insiders had told him the party was expecting to lose seats, according to a new book about the election.

Shortly before the exit poll, which sent shockwaves through both party headquarters, the former US president contacted a friend in Tory central office with the soothing news that Labour was expecting to see the Conservatives increase their majority.

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The revelation is contained in extracts from a new book, Betting the House, by the journalists Tom McTague and Tim Ross, published in the Mail on Sunday, that the prime minister appeared to be a germaphobe and reluctant to visit party HQ as a result - and that the results of the election night exit poll leaked early.

They write that Fiona Hill, one of May’s joint chiefs of staff, was tipped off a few minutes in advance about the result of the exit poll, which is usually tightly guarded by broadcasters.

The BBC presenter Andrew Marr admits to having contacted Tory HQ with details of the exit poll that contradicted Obama’s message before the results were announced but told the authors it was only seconds before 10pm. Details of the poll are kept to a very small team of senior staff.



The initial reaction to the exit poll, which is a large-scale survey of thousands of voters as they leave their polling stations, was disbelief. May’s other chief of staff, Nick Timothy, reportedly winked and told a colleague: “Don’t worry about that, it’s all fine. Nothing we’ve seen says anything like it.”

But as results from constituencies up and down the country confirmed the accuracy of the exit poll, Timothy apparently wondered aloud whether May should consider stepping down rather than endure the wave of criticism that would follow. The book claims that May’s husband, Philip, thought that his tearful wife might have to resign for the sake of her “wellbeing”.



But the authors claim May became determined to stay on after the Brexit secretary, David Davis, said he would support her, and she received a text message from Boris Johnson in the early hours of the morning urging her to keep her “chin up”, and promising: “We are with you and behind you.”

The pair were considered the most likely leadership contenders in the aftermath of the catastrophic election result.

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The authors also reveal that May rarely visited party workers, fearing that Conservative HQ was “a pit of germs”. “There were quite a lot of germs flying around,” one Conservative source said.

When the prime minister did finally arrive to give a morale-boosting speech to staff, it was a rehash of her already wearily familiar stump speech. “It was all ‘strong and stable’ and the risks of Corbyn’s ‘coalition of chaos’. I couldn’t believe it,” one eyewitness said.

Some party workers began visibly checking their phones for Twitter updates. “This was the prime minister of the United Kingdom talking in the middle of an election to her own campaign staff and she couldn’t even hold the room,” the source told McTague and Ross.

The extracts suggest May’s advisers were bitterly divided between presenting her as a radical reformer, or the “strong and stable” face of continuity.



At an “away day” in February in her country retreat, Chequers, May’s political strategist Chris Wilkins and Timothy set out a series of social and economic reforms, and said the prime minister must be presented as “the person who always fought for relentless change”.

But Crosby, the Australian elections expert, dismissed their approach as “classic populist woolly bullshit”, according to the book.

Crosby told the senior advisers, who had gathered to discuss the party’s strategy over a meal of chicken lasagne and potatoes: “By the way, mate, it’s not about being the change candidate, it’s about doing what people want.”

Crosby, regarded as one of the masterminds of David Cameron’s unexpected victory in 2015, was sceptical about the idea of an early election, which May had repeatedly said was not necessary. But he and colleague Mark Textor nevertheless took on the job of advising the Conservatives.

When the election campaign kicked off, the stripped down message of strong and stable leadership became the central thrust of the Tory campaign – and allowed Labour to present Jeremy Corbyn as offering a radical alternative for voters disgruntled with the status quo.

Wilkins told Ross and McTague: “In the campaign, we basically just screwed the brand completely, hers and the party’s. We suddenly became the establishment candidate and Corbyn the candidate for change.”



Timothy was determined to press ahead with some policies for change – including the controversial changes to social care funding that were included in the manifesto.

And May reportedly backed his determination to include detailed policy in the closely guarded document, despite Crosby’s argument that: “I hate policy, it only causes problems.”