Rumours of a bitter feud in the Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative Party have been confirmed in farcical fashion. The Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has airbrushed a Tory council leader out of an official photo. These two pictures tell the story:
In PICTURE ONE , we see the launch of the Somerset Rivers Authority. On the back row, just to the left of the Tory minister Liz Truss, is the Conservative leader of West Somerset Council, Tim Taylor.
Liddell-Grainger celebrated this event with a picture on his blog.
But in PICTURE TWO Taylor is no longer present. He has been deleted from history. Liddell-Grainger (or his staff) couldn’t even do it very well. Observe the mantelpiece above Truss’s head. In picture one it’s straight. In the doctored picture it looks as if it was installed by a cowboy builder.
So why would a Conservative MP go to the extraordinary length of doctoring a photograph to suggest that a council leader from his own party does not exist?
Somerset Labour put that question to sources who know what’s going on. We were told: ”It’s simple. They hate each other.”
Many members of Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative Party are unhappy with their MP. They believe – rightly – that Liddell Grainger is arrogant and lazy. Somerset Labour understands that Taylor was instrumental in a failed attempt to replace Liddell-Grainger as Tory candidate for 2015.
This would be funny if it were not so serious. What has been revealed here is an almost incredible level of animosity between a Tory MP and a Tory council leader. Who’d vote for either of them?