There’s a cracking post on David Bartlett’s Dale Street Blues blog detailing the bizarre internecine feud tearing apart Wirral West Conservatives.

Almost as if to prove that Labour and the Lib Dems don’t have the monopoly on going for each others’ throats, the local party has found its members taking each other to court and being beastly to each other.

Basically Dick Calver, former chairman of Wirral West Conservative Association, is sued for libel and slander by Bahram Noorani, a ‘Greasby-based Iranian Conservative’ for (allegedly) alleging that Noorani made a series of bizarre and threatening phonecalls to Calver and his family.

In turn Noorani accuses Calver of directing racial slurs at him. Eventually Noorani’s case is thrown out and the Judge labels Noorani ‘responsible’ for the calls, but not before a former Wirral councillor giving evidence on Noorani’s behalf is revealed to be due in court to plead guilty to ‘making indecent images’.

Even the notorious British libel system, something with which I’ve no desire to become more familiar, didn’t think much of this one, which is really saying something and it’s strange that the case was ever taken to court.

I’m not going to detail the entire episode, as the relevant parts of the story are laid out by David, but let me just give you the following phrases:

• A leading Conservative in Wirral is facing a libel and slander trial after allegedly calling a party colleague an Islamic terrorist.• Two of the calls were from a male describing himself as ‘an acid expert from Widnes’.• Mr Calver’s solicitors have alleged in papers to the court that Mr Noorani had asked a 16-year-old boy to phone Mr Calver and give him a “hard time”.• “No wonder you have depression, married to an Islamic terrorist,” Mr Noorani alleges Mr Calver said to his wife and daughter.• “I had an appointment with Esther McVey, then I had a message saying ‘Sorry, I can’t make it’.”• Summing up, Mr Justice Coulson told the court Mr Noorani’s own evidence “demonstrated” he made the calls.• “You don’t embark on High Court litigation on the basis that if you lose it’s a free ride.”

I’ve known a couple of acid experts from Widnes myself, but they weren’t the kind to make threatening phone calls.

Indeed, if the acid expert had turned out to be some whacked-out 60’s trip casualty, the case could hardly have been any stranger.

The Tories will be hoping to take Wirral West at the next election but, in true Murkeyside politics fashion, they seem to be doing their level best to screw it up.