Esther and the curious incident of the Lib Dem posters

I am grateful to Liberal Cynic for pointing out, in a comment on my previous post, the curious incident of Esther and the Liberal Democrat posters. Intrigued I followed up on this by asking around our local campaign team to see if they knew anything about it. It turns out they did and this is what was reported back to me;

Last Saturday one of Luton Liberal Democrat’s local activists Haji Abid, a former Mayor of Luton, supplied two posters to a shop run by a supporter of Qurban Hussain the Liberal Democrat candidate for Luton South. These poster were duly placed in the shop’s window.

On the following Monday the shopkeeper got a phone call from independent candidate Esther Rantzen asking if ITN News at Ten could film her there. The shopkeeper, being a friendly chap, said that she could.

Later that day Esther turned up with the ITN film crew in tow. They set up an began filming Esther who started to take down the Liberal Democrat posters and replace them with hers. In the screen shot from the broadcast below you can see one of our posters laying to the side.

Apparently our supportive shopkeeper friend was more than a little shocked at Esther’s cheek. So, when Esther and the film crew had left, he quickly returned our posters to the window.

A minor incident perhaps but a good reminder that, especially during elections, not everything you see on TV is what it seems.

This content was originally posted on my old Strange Thoughts blog.