Rutland and Corby?

It sounds as though Liberal Democrats in the East Midlands are falling out over boundary changes. Or they are judging by the Rutland Times:

Rutland's Liberal Democrats want to reassure voters that they had nothing to do with a proposal to create a new Rutland and Corby constituency. 

A public consultation is under way into plans to cut the number of parliamentary constituencies by 50 to 600. 

In September the Boundary Commission said it had no plans to change the Melton and Rutland constituency but last week the East Midlands Liberal Democrats revealed its own proposals which includes a Rutland and Corby constituency. 

Vice chairman of the Rutland and Melton Liberal Democrats, Grahame Hudson, said the local group had nothing to do with the plans. 

He said: "I have no idea why we weren’t consulted on the proposal but we are totally against what the East Midlands Liberal Democrats put forward. 

"It makes no sense because there are no traditional links between Rutland and Corby."

The truth is that nowhere has "traditional links" with Corby. It is a steel town set down in the Northamptonshire countryside in the 1930s and a large proportion of its workforce came from Scotland - walked from Scotland, if you believe the folklore.

The present Corby constituency also contains wide swathes of countryside, and the seat's high-profile Tory MP  Louise Mensch lives in the pleasant town of Oundle rather than Corby.

But then when the iron and steel trades unionist Bill Homewood was Labour MP for Kettering, in the days when the seat included Corby, he lived in a bungalow here in Market Harborough.