Manchester lib Elliot Bovill pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge of assault in the October 2021 traffic coning of former UK Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the Independent reports. “Mr Bovill approaches Sir Iain Duncan Smith and he has a traffic cone, which he places on Sir Iain Duncan Smith’s head and then he runs off,” Prosecutor Sudara Weerasena described the savage coning incident at a pretrial hearing in the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday.
Bovill will stand trial alongside fellow lib Mancs Ruth Wood and – we shit you not – Radical Haslam for harassing Smith as he left the Tory party’s conference on the same night. Wood is accused of loudly banging a drum and yelling “Tory scum! Get out of Manchester, you’re not welcome!” while Haslam carried a sign saying “Not fit to govern,” and told “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Haslam and Wood are charged with “using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause Sir Iain harassment, alarm or distress” which is kind of quaint considering that’s basically the only way Americans talk to each other about politics these days.