General election: Cameron's 'sweetest victory' for Conservatives

David Cameron described it as the "sweetest victory of them all". After a decade as party leader, the prime minister finally proved his sceptics wrong by delivering the largest tally of Tory seats in more than 20 years.

Like Margaret Thatcher in 1983, Mr Cameron defied expectations as he increased the number of MPs on his backbenches and finally clinched a mandate to govern alone after five years of coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

With 37 per cent of the vote, David Cameron was the first incumbent prime minister since Anthony Eden in the 1955 election to have increased his popular vote share in a national poll.

"He is now totally his own man," said Alan Duncan, a former minister in the first Cameron administration. "This has just massively restored the Conservative party's self-confidence and self-belief."

Speaking to activists at Conservative campaign headquarters, the prime minister was clearly savouring the moment as he taunted those who thought he was heading for defeat.

"I remember casting a vote in '87 and that was a great victory. I remember working just as you've been working in '92 and that was an amazing victory. And I remember 2010, achieving that dream of getting Labour out and getting the Tories back in and that was amazing. But I think this is the sweetest victory of them all," he told the delighted crowd.

With 326 seats, the tally of Conservative MPs increased by 19 compared to the 2010 result. It was the best performance by a Tory leader since the big increase in the Conservatives' share of the vote presided over by Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 election.

For Mr Cameron, the result is a personal triumph that proves beyond all doubt that he is more popular than the Conservative party brand.

After five years of often strained relationships with his parliamentary party, Mr Cameron has finally silenced his critics who believed him incapable of delivering an outright win.

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But his politics has always jarred with that of the more traditional wing of his party - a tension that burst out into the open in 2010 after the prime minister's brand of Big Society conservatism failed to translate into success at the polls.

During the past five years of coalition, relations between the prime minister and his backbenchers have often been tense.

They pushed him into promising a referendum on EU membership in 2013: they carped at him for pressing ahead with new laws to allow gay couples to marry and ringfencing Britain's foreign aid budget when other departments were being cut.

He was also accused of an excessively relaxed approach to governing after a biography was published in 2012 which claimed he enjoyed "chillaxing" by playing "Fruit Ninja" on his iPad, taking breaks from the working day to watch DVDs in the Number 10 flat and having a regular "date night" with his wife.

Tory backbenchers have accused him of being "cliquey", failing to woo the parliamentary party and instead surrounding himself with a small group of school and university friends.

After five years of giving way to the Lib Dems on the one side and his restive backbenchers on the other, Mr Cameron begins his second term with a clear mandate and increased personal authority.

"He will return to a hero's welcome -- Houdini does it again," joked one of his detractors, who acknowledged the prime minister's power has been hugely enhanced by the result.

"All these new MPs owe their seats to David Cameron and those who try to criticise him will be ostracised," observed another MP. "If he's clever he'll frontload his programme for the first five years before disgruntlement sets in."

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