Is this a case of sour grapes or has a Croydon councillor blown the lid off an electoral conspiracy between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives?

Yesterday the Conservatives held on to their Greater London Assembly seat in Croydon and Sutton with voters handing incumbent member Steve O’Connell a third term in City Hall.

Mr O'Connell stretched his majority of Labour from 9,418 to 11,614 scoring 70,156 votes.

Labour’s Marina Ahmad came in second with 58,542 votes followed by Liberal Democrat Amna Ahmad with 18,859 votes.

FROM YESTERDAY: Conservatives hold Croydon and Sutton GLA seat with increased majority

But in a bizarre twist Croydon’s Labour councillor Stuart Collins appears to have suggested the Liberal Democrat party "saved" the Conservatives by selecting a candidate with the same last name as Labour’s candidate in order to skew the results.

Cllr Collins, deputy leader of the council, took to Twitter after the Conservative’s win to say: “Lib Dem Sutton has saved you again even put up candidate with same name to help you.”

Even more bizarrely, the Tweet was aimed at Conservative councillor Mario Creatura rather than Mr O’Connell – the man who actually stood in the election.

Seemingly uninterested in the bombshell Cllr Collins dropped, Cllr Creatura simply told him there was “no need to be a bad sport”.