Is it just them, or is it all of them?

There's this bloke in the village - pleasant fellow, tall, fair, nice looking. Pung, his name is.* He and his wife are independent barristers, they have two kids, a bunch of grandmas and a lodger. He is quintessentially English - courteous, unassuming, a self-deprecating sense of humour and - this is where it goes off the rails a tiny bit - he is an armchair Liberal Democrat.

Or was. He, it transpires, had been dallying with the idea of actually getting up out of his armchair, and actually standing (for parliament - this metaphor could run and run). What with election fever gripping the nation, for a few days anyway, our man hurtled into action, dishing out questionnaires and buttonholes and glad hands like a man possessed. And at every turn, well some turns anyway, he was asked if he was working with Tonk**.

'Tonk??' Pung would cry. 'Who he?'

'Dontcherno?' would come the startled reply. 'He's Ming's*** right hand man, his policy adviser, the speechwriter who inserts all the jokes that Ming takes out. He lives just round the corner.'

How about that then. A local bloke wanting to stand for Lib Dem MP didn't know that Menzies Campbell's chief policy adviser was living in the same village, and the chief policy adviser didn't know that a local bloke was wanting to stand for Lib Dem MP.

Is this just the Lib Dems, or the Labs and Cons too? It doesn't inspire confidence, it has to be said.

* No of course it isn't.
** Not his real name either.
***Nope, not his real name, but his real nickname.