There were red faces over at true-blue Tory HQ, after the Conservatives in Ilford, north London, distributed a leaflet that was basically a mail merge template. But printed. Quite how nobody noticed that the text was essentially dummy copy (“Three lines of text about what issues/projects/policies you’ve already done or are doing or will be doing in your ward/area” was repeated no less than four times) is quite the mystery. 

On the bright side, it will have required a reprint and at least the Conservatives didn’t actually blame the printer, according to a Huffington Post report on the debacle. “This was a template that was sent to the printers in error,” said a party spokesperson. 

As it happens, some sort of template, and preferably a grown-up able to proof read, would have been useful for hapless Tory candidate Kamran Razzaq (now suspended). His electioneering leaflet accused Labour of contributing ‘hepatitis’ to the Cradley and Wollescote ward in Stourbridge, while simultaneously including the howler ‘commnunity’.  

The scaling back of UKIP’s activities since the referendum has, though, spared us the up until now inevitable “UKIP prints leaflets in Germany” meme.