Liberal democrat leadership candidate “SIR” Vince Cable has been left looking a plum strawberry fool after his claim that Britain was running out of strawberries because of a shortage of migrant fruit pickers was exposed as untrue by the Super Soar-away Sun.

“FIB DEM Humiliation – FAKE NEWS,” screamed the headline in the soft, sweet, juicy British Redtop.

Cable’s claim that the departure of migrant Romanian fruit pickers had left British fruit farms short of slave labour was squashed, pulped and juiced by the Sun which revealed that sales of British Strawberries had BALLOONED to £1.6 million , and that they are being sold to customers as far away as Uruguay and China.

“At Wimbledon prices that’s almost one whole strawberry for every central court spectator, or one punnet each for the whole of Latin America and China” explained international soft fruit analyst Dr Joseph Loganberry.

Analysts were not the only ones metaphorically creaming themselves at Britain’s staggering strawberry shaped soft fruit sales extravaganza.

“This is yet more proof that stiff demand for British exports is remaining rigid in the face of the anti Brexit propaganda, and that they will continue to thrust ahead,” purred International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox, explaining that in some countries demand for British products is so great that they are literally being pulled off the shelves.

“SIR” Cable’s mis-strung strawberry story is not the first time that senior Liberals have fallen foul of soft fruit fibbery.

Few can forget the party’s deep embarrassment at the exposure of what 60s-70s party leader Jeremy Thorpe got up to with his banana.

His successor, David Steel, was exposed as something of a squashed gooseberry when his 1979 declaration to his Liberal colleagues to “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”, led to his party netting a mere 13 seats.

And one of those was the truly enormous seat of Rochdale MP Cyril Smith who was later exposed as preferring his fruit both soft, and controversially unripe.

Steel’s successor, Paddy Ashdown fared little better.  Despite having served as a captain in the Royal marines and SBS, his political career came under heavy fire when the Sun revealed that he had got his plums out with his secretary.

While his successor, Charles Kennedy suffered from an over fondness for the fruit of the barley field.

More recently, Norman Clegg’s failed coalition with the conservatives left him looking a complete lemon while controversy surrounding current outgoing leader Tim Farron’s hand wringing religious quandary raised more questions than it answered.

More precisely, had he ever popped his cherry, and if so, with whom?

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