'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

I'm not sure when I finally lost it with them. Was it their eve-of-poll claiming I planned to privatise the NHS (easy to do from a seat on a provincial District Council I'm sure, even if I wanted to) or was it when they claimed the police were investigating me for issuing a fake leaflet (that I had never even seen, and was never asked about, so funny old investigation, that). The policies are way down the list, I should have responded that they planned to abolish the NHS and spend it all on homeopathy, but in Oxford that might have won them votes... as it was they mostly ran their elections as a single-issue campaign against mobile phone masts.