Meddle not in the affairs of Spin-Doctors, for they are subtle and quick to anger, but slow to take revenge.
Long ago, in the isles off the western edge shores of Midgard, there lived a small people known as the Liberals. They talked of freedom, quaffed foaming ale, wore sandals on their curly-haired toes, sipped the Water of Life, and smoked much pipeweed, and it was many years, almost an Age of Men, since they had troubled the counsels of the Great (I will not say the Wise). Their Focus was Local, and the Mighty were content with that.
Every few years some would be elected to the Queen's High Council and they would sit before the high lords and the proud and talk of freedom, and then after the Sitting they would quaff the foaming ale or sip the Water of Life and songs would be sung and tales would be told. Whenever overweening pride came on any one of them, then those High Lords or Parliament would give him a Ring of Power and a fur-lined robe and an official driver and send him off far beyond the Misty Mountains to preside over a small nation or govern a stiff-necked Grand Duchy.
All was well, till one bright May morning in the Third Way, the People of England (who had not spoken yet), fearing the Iron Lady from beyond her political grave, rose up almost as one and voted for anyone who wasn't a Tory. And many Liberals were sent up to the Queen's High Council. And they began to talk not only of freedom but of power. And there was consternation in the smoke-filled rooms for the space of three cigarettes. So those high lords and those proud took counsel with one another, and with their mighty men of valour, and with their Spin Doctors. And they laid plans and they watched and they waited and they guarded and above all they remembered the songs that had been sung and the tales that had been told.
In the winter of the year after Something of the Night had been expelled from its last stronghold in the Shires by the forces of Electoral Process, and Cameron Justlikeus was crowing in his new strength, the Liberals looked out on that strength and coveted it. And they began to talk openly of challenging the Dark Lords of Party and raising up a new power in the land. And they came out from their western fastnesses and began to be seen in the land. And the Dark Lords of Party unleashed grim warfare that long been building behind their walls.
And the Great and Mighty (I will not say the Wise) remembered the songs that had been sung and the tales that had been told. And they sent the Men in Grey suits to tempt the Liberals and teach them the Lore of the Old Tories, things not fit to be spoken of by the humble or the merciful. And those Liberals were tempted, and began to Brief Against the Leader. And it was remembered that Curly-Haired Charlie had drank too deeply of the Water of Life, and he found it the Water of Death.
And then they remembered other songs that had been sung and tales that had been told. And they called on Rupert, the Witch King of Murdoch who descended to the deepest dungeon of Fortress Wapping and dragged out a poor mad fool kept gibbering there in the dark against this very hour. And it was revealed that Marco Oatings, Thane of Isling Tun, had once accidentally penetrated a churl while leaning over him to reach for a Murray Mint. And he died.
And then they remembered other songs that had been sung and tales that had been told. And the Witch King sent out his Dark Riders from the News of the Screws with their great slavering hound Svensbane, and they fell suddenly upon Beormund's Isle in their wrath and found Simon of the Chair hiding in his closet. And Peter of Thatchell, the Holy Fool of Agnosis, laughed all the way to the bonk.
Now Ming the Merciless sat in his damp tower in dour Dunedin, and trembled.
And Whono of South Hampton Shire looked over the southlands took counsel with his soul and said, my soul, sometimes it is good to be overlooked. And also, my soul, my majority is small. And what is more, my soul, there are plenty more small countries beyond the Misty Mountains in need of a Liberal Democrat Peer.