In his last general election as leader, in May 2005, he extended his strategy from the 2001 election targeting the seats held by the most senior and/or highly regarded Conservative MPs, dubbed a "decapitation" strategy [REF].
They won significant numbers of seats from Labour, winning particularly in student areas such as Bristol, Cardiff and Manchester, but did not see the breakthrough in areas with large Asian populations that some had expected, and even lost Leicester South.