Down in Bournemouth I met a lot of Lib Dem Bloggers, but there’s one I didn’t meet – the pseudonymous Costigan Quist, winner of the Lib Dem Blog of the Year award on the Sunday, and ex-blogger on the Monday.

Apparently he was in the room when the award was given out, yet got his friend to accept the award on his behalf anyway – there were other rumours that Mr Quist was going to a lot of trouble to avoid anyone linking the blog to his face.

What was the reason for this level of paranoia? Curious bloggers had to know! It’s not like bloggers are camped by paparazzi photographers, or stalked by tabloid journalists. It’s not as if Costigan had been attacking people (I’m reasonably certain he never attacked anyone). He’s not been publishing scoops, or exclusives, or anything that raises even the slightest hint of controversy.

So the rumour doing the rounds (and it’s from a pretty good source so has a lot of credibility) is that the reason for all this anonymity is because Costigan is, in fact, a Lib Dem Councillor in a (exact words were) ‘a very SDP area’, and he’s terrified that his blog will be used against him.

If that rumour is true, that’s incredibly disappointing. The idea that any Lib Dems are actually perfectly liberal, but have to pretend to be left wingers? That’s heart breaking.

Of course, it’s all rumour, so don’t take this as gospel, but this is a theme I’m going to be coming back to again and again over the course of this next year: Don’t hide your liberalism.