A BY-ELECTION leaflet from the LibDems in the constituency of Tory MP Owen Paterson appears to mislead voters on the party's electability in the area.
Paterson, a former Tory minister and the MP for North Shropshire, announced he would step down from his seat after a debacle in the Commons last week where the Tory government U-turned on a decision to revamp the standards process to save him from suspension.
The Tory MP had been found to have lobbied on behalf of firms paying him £100,000 a year and was facing a six-week suspension.
READ MORE: Jacob Rees-Mogg told to step down after 'disastrous' Owen Paterson defence
The leaflet suggests that the LibDems are "on the up" in North Shropshire due to their "last election result" in the area from May 2021 where they placed second behind the Conservatives.
The only issue is that the result was for a local election. Labour was actually second in the area for the 2019 General Election with the LibDems languishing in third with less than half the votes of Labour.
The LibDem candidate actually received just 10% of the vote whereas Paterson managed to net more than 60% in what is considered a safe Tory seat.
The leaflet was shared on Twitter by The i's political correspondent Richard Vaughan.
The election result referred to in the leaflet was for the Shropshire Council that returned results in May of this year. The Conservatives lead that council, returning 43 seats while the LibDems came second with 14 councillors.
The leaflet also states that the LibDems have more councillors than any other party except the Conservatives, which only really serves to show that people vote for councillors differently than they do for MPs.
The Tories are in government with 360 MPs while the LibDems are the fourth most popular party with just 12 members, behind Labour and the SNP.
The LibDems do have form for a dodgy graph on election leaflets.
In April, ahead of the Holyrood elections, the party seemed to indicate they were the main competition to the SNP in East Dunbartonshire, despite the result referring to a Westminster election where the constituency has different boundaries.
READ MORE: 'Propaganda': Alex Cole-Hamilton 'misleads' constituents with fake newspaper
A few weeks before that, now-leader of the party in Scotland Alex Cole-Hamilton sent out a "newspaper" to constituents titled the West Edinburgh News Gazette and featuring stories about the incumbent MSP.
The Liberal Democrats were contacted for comment.
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