We Went to the Tory Victory Party at a London Strip Club

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

On Friday night, while Labour-voting London congregated outside pubs to condemn the outcome of democracy, Tory supporters were celebrating the first majority Conservative government in more than 20 years. And what better way to usher in five more years of neglecting the young, sick, old, and disabled than by hurling cash and Dom Pérignon at dancers in the capital's unofficial Conservative Party party HQ: Stringfellows strip club.

Peter Stringfellow, a Thatcher fan and the owner of the club he named after himself, was throwing a General Election "Victory Party," which had been advertised on Facebook with the promise of complementary fluorescent blue shots and "Free dances all night!"

However, it appeared little had been done to promote the occasion IRL. There were no banners outside, no stream of jubilant bankers in cardboard David Cameron masks—just two intimidating bouncers and a very quiet smoking area.

After the door staff told me it was fine to hang around in the hope that I might be there when a Rolls-Royce full of marauding Bullingdon boys turned up, I was approached by Derek, the biggest bouncer there. Lovely though he was, he didn't seem to appreciate the concept of personal space.

"So what are you doing here, then?" he asked, very close to my face.

I explained that I was there to speak to the guests about their views on the Tory victory, but that it didn't look like I'd be able to do much of that stuck outside the front door. So, instead, I asked Derek how he thought the clientele had voted.

"It's very much Conservative voters in there," he said. "You'll find people in there owe a lot to the coalition government. All these [other] people are looking back and complaining about Cameron winning, but if you think about it, what did the coalition even do that was that bad?"

Derek is a long-serving member of staff at Stringfellows. The club opened as a flashy nightclub for the capital's elite in 1980, and a decade later Peter Stringfellow introduced the table dancing. Derek has worked at the club for 25 years and remembers the transition.

"It was all very fashionable back then, this table dancing," he told me. "Last night we had an election party for the girls. We had some big spenders in that night. One guy came in and spent £29,000 [$45,000]. That's a lot to spend on just one evening.

"What's amazing is you still have people coming in and spending that kind of money here after all these years. I don't know if it's just because I've worked here for so long and the whole table-dancing thing bores me now, but I think it's starting to go out of fashion."

One thing Stringfellows is famous for is its loyalty to the Tory cause. A long-term donor to the conservatives, Peter Stringfellow gave more than £35,000 [$55,000] to the party between 2003 and 2005.

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"It's true blue in there—all Conservative voters," said another bouncer I spoke to after Derek. A guy called James—the only club-goer I was able to talk to—couldn't vote this year, but has always been loyal to the Conservative party.

"I've lived in America for several years and missed the chance to register. But if I had, I would've definitely voted Conservative," he told me. "Really, they are the only party right for the job now. I think they have very strong economic policies, and that's still very important. David Cameron is the best of a bad bunch, really. The other party leaders were trying to seem appealing to people, but Cameron was the only one who seemed competent. He's a competent person."

While the Tories enjoyed a surprisingly large share of the vote last week, some of their support—and a number of their MPs—had been snatched up by UKIP. Stringfellow himself made the headlines in 2012 for his surprise support of the party in a London by-election.

"I think Farage is a very good businessman," James told me as we got onto the topic. "He seems to understand what he needs to do, and executes it well. I don't support those policies, but he's a clever man."

This sentiment—that business is best—seemed to ring true among everyone I spoke to. Derek, for example, judged the coalition's success on his boss's success: "Businesses are doing a lot better round here, and there's more of them than ever," he said. "It can't have been all bad."

Of course, that's one of the main problems that non-Tories have with the Conservatives' apparent worldview: that a happy economy is preferable to a happy society. I couldn't get in to Stringfellows myself to pester the guests on how to justify that balance, but it's safe to say that anyone spending almost £30,000 ($47,000) in one night would have their reasons.