Mayor of Watford mocked after leaflets show her canvassing at her own front door

The Lib Dem Mayor of Watford has been conducting a bit of jiggery pokery with her campaign leaflets.

A lot of politicians would love the kind of reputation that everyone in their community knows them by name, and knows how to find their representative.

Watford Mayor Dorothy Thornhill has been caught out, perhaps because she's a bit too in touch with her constituents.

Thornhill appeared on local election leaflets, alongside Lib Dem candidates in the North Watford and Nascot and Park wards.

The image used on multiple leaflets showed Thornhill talking to a voter on the door step, alongside that ward's Liberal Democrat candidate.

Over familiarity with residents led them to realise this "oh look at me talking to the people" photo was somewhat staged.

It transpired that the photos were actually taken at Thornhill's own home, as spotted by eagle-eyed readers of the Watford Observer.

Not only did they recognise the location as outside Watkins home, they realised the candidates for North Watford and Nascot Park were therefore a considerable distance from either ward.

It was mocked by Brexit campaign supremo Aaron Banks and by Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson.

'Desperate'

The local Labour party jumped on the incident, calling it 'dishonest', and accused the Lib Dems of trying to 'dupe' the electorate.

Thornhill has dismissed it as 'a fuss about nothing', and calls Labour's outrage 'desperate'.

Seeing red

The Lib Dems must be pretty livid when it comes to their campaign literature.

It follows another Lib Dem leaflet flop that happened in March, when their West Midlands Mayoral candidate forgot what party she was from.

Beverley Nielson was badly served by her campaign team and local office, because 15,000 leaflets went out referring to her as the 'Labour' candidate.

#LibDemFightBack

Mayor Thornhill is standing down as mayor next year when her term comes to an end.

She contested the Watford parliamentary constituency in 2015, coming third behind the Conservatives and Labour.

HT Telegraph

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