Dorothy Thornhill, Lib Dem Mayor of Watford, has decided to ban parents from some Watford playgrounds, and been completely slammed by it. Well, by everyone but Lib Dems anyway.

What is interesting is the reaction amongst the Lib Dem blogosphere and twitterati to this. They all automatically and without question fell into line behind her as soon as her so-called “clarification” was published – because Lib Dems, despite their rhetoric, are the most tribal of all political parties. What is most amusing is the attempts by Lib Dem Voice to smear Iain Dale as a “churnalist” after his post on the issue, saying:

Tory blogger Iain Dale should perhaps have paused before clicking ‘publish’ on his latest – highly inaccurate – post, How Very Illiberal of a LibDem Mayor. Those few seconds’ hesitation would have been sufficient for him to do a quick Google and find out what he was about to write was nonsense.

Except (a) I don’t believe that it that wasn’t published when Iain wrote his post and (b) doesn’t answer why this ban was brought in. The reason put forward by Dorothy Thornhill has changed from “they might be paedophiles” and “the government made us!1!!” to “the staff can’t do their job with parents there”. Make up your mind, dear.

Of course, Lib Dems just can’t accept that one of their own could have possibly been wrong. Some just go around trying to make out that this is some kind of non-story, despite the fact that it quite obviously is. And neither can they pass up the opporunity to make party political points when accusing others of doing precisely that!

In fact, I don’t think I’ve found any Lib Dem who isn’t blindly supportive of Dotty and her illiberal ways – whatever the reason they eventually settle on as the “real” one, there is no denying that it is illiberal. Not that it should surprise anyone that the Liberal Democrats aren’t exactly liberal.