Mainstream parties let voters down when they don't even put up candidates

They have only managed to put someone up to stand for them in just over a quarter of the seats up for grabs in the Black Country, Cannock Chase and Wyre Forest.

Nick Clegg was the butt of Labour's joke in its latest party political broadcast, a snide piece of class warfare that was an unfunny parody of B-movie sci-fi combined with Harry Enfield's Mr Cholmondley Warner; with not a single piece of policy to be seen. It portrayed the Lib Dem leader as an 'un-credible shrinking man' over broken promises such as scrapping tuition fees.

The sad thing for the Deputy Prime Minister is he's a man being kicked when he is down.

And while the Black Country was never really Liberal Democrat heartland, pop over the border into Cannock Chase and it was only four years ago that they were the biggest party. Now they have people standing for them in just six out of 13 wards.

So no-one can really blame Labour for making an appeal to the disaffected voters who have abandoned the Lib Dems. They need a champion and Ed Miliband wants to be it.

It's a shrewd, if spitefully handled, move to try to bring them into the fold, given that the European Union cheerleaders stand utterly opposed to the prime raison d'être of Ukip (Wolverhampton's recent ex-Lib Dem turned Ukip councillor Malcolm Gwinnett aside).

I rang up the Lib Dem press office this week to put the question of whether they are still a mainstream party to them.

The man who answered the phone sounded as though it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, as though I was asking if the sun was going to rise tomorrow. He replied: "Well, of course we are, we're in government."

Later on I got the reply that the party was still fielding more candidates than Ukip anywhere else in the country.

After weeks of reading about the Eurosceptics, I wouldn't blame anyone for having Farage Fatigue. But Ukip are presenting themselves as a mainstream party now - around here anyway.

They have a fraction of the party membership of the Tories but managed to stand in the vast majority of wards.

The Conservatives, as the senior party in Government, should be standing everywhere without exception.

But they failed to apply to put anyone up as a candidate in West Bromwich Central, leaving it to be a two-horse race between Labour and Ukip.

Anyone in the area who might put themselves to the right of centre (and even in the old Labour stronghold that is Sandwell there must be some) may well find themselves feeling pretty cheesed off at the lack of choice.

The same thing has happened in the Cannock Chase ward of Brereton and Ravenhill, where there is a sitting Lib Dem defending his seat.

The Tories came last there when people voted before so decided to concentrate on other wards.

That leaves Ukip as the only choice for anyone to the right of centre.

For all the efforts and energy spent exposing Ukip as a party of 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists'; for all the time spent trawling social media for comments made years ago; for all the bricks and other heavy items sent to the party's freepost address by those who dislike what it stands for - if the party that is in Government is not even going to fight Ukip wherever it surfaces, it may as well throw in the towel.