The Lib Dems are gearing up their local election campaign and that means only one thing – comically distorted and misleading bar charts. A co-conspirator received this classic in Norton ward, Dudley. The Lib Dems haven’t even bothered distorting a previous result this time, they’ve just made up an entirely imaginary chart of what the result “could look like”.

In fact, when Norton was last contested just last year, the Lib Dems were beaten soundly into third place by Labour with just 10% of the vote compared to Labour’s 23%, while the Conservative candidate romped home with 62%. The Lib Dems last won a seat there in 2003 – if Labour are “out of the running”, the Lib Dems aren’t even in the race. Guido has fixed their chart for them: