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I WAS as intrigued as everyone else at the prospect of Charlie Kennedy crossing the floor and joining Labour. Setting aside my obvious tribal motivation, that’s the kind of drama that political anoraks thrive upon.

But it was not to be. Not only was it not to be, it became quite clear in the early hours of Sunday morning that there was never an ounce of truth in the rumour in the first place. It wasn’t just a rumour – it was a lie. From Charlie’s perspective it was also a smear.

These kinds of rumours do the rounds far more quickly than they did in pre-internet days. You could argue, I suppose, that it’s more democratic now that ordinary web-users and not just the media and political elites now get the chance to hear these snippets. But that doesn’t justify them, nor does it excuse the motivations of whoever chose deliberately to spread them in the first place, knowing they were disseminating a lie.

That’s a dangerous and stupid game to play. In revenge, and as a joke, numerous LibDem Tweeters started predicting that Ed Miliband was about to defect to them. But the entertainment value of such rumours are dwarfed by the colossal damage they can do to individuals’ reputations. Anyone can become a victim of a decision, for whatever reason – political gain or just pure vindictiveness – to smear anyone in this way.

The mainstream media even started reporting the rumour as fact, which suggests that someone, somewhere – someone known to journalists and with a degree of credibility as a political source – was briefing this story.

Whoever that was is now revealed as a liar, and journalists would do well to delete him from their contact books.