Tim Farron has taken a few tumbles in his electoral campaign, but none quite as literal as this one live on Sky News on Monday.
Footage from a live broadcast aboard the Liberal Democrats’ battle bus shows Farron walking towards political correspondent Darren McCaffrey, who is delivering a piece to camera.
On a particularly bumpy stretch of the campaign trail, Farron loses his balance and almost hits the floor.
Farron, clearly embarrassed, ambles out of shot as McCaffrey continues the coverage, unaware of the Lib Dem leader’s antics behind him.
However, the gaffe didn’t get past social media users, who mocked the MP mercilessly.
“Did anyone else just see Tim Farron fall over on his battle bus live on Sky News??” one user asked Twitter followers.
“Another political stumble?” another added.
The blunder came shortly after the Lib Dem leader was outed as a fan of Margaret Thatcher in his younger days.
In an interview with ITV, Farron admitted hanging a poster of the divisive Conservative leader on his bedroom wall as a teenager.
“I had a Carl Sagan photograph above my bed, who was of course the great, I guess the human voice of NASA. I had pictures of strange sort of left wing politicians.
"I remember I had a Mrs. Thatcher picture. I had a John F. Kennedy picture. I had a [Liberal leader] Jo Grimond picture,” Farron said.
Keen to shrug off accusations he was once a Thatcherite, Farron was quick to explain the admiration was the result of a crush on a Tory contemporary.
“There was a young woman, let’s be careful what I say, who when I was about 15/16 who had a soft top Morris Minor, and she was a young Tory. And so I was somewhat taken aback by her, but frankly not by her politics,” he added.
Once again the interwebs did not look kindly at his candor. Many seemed appalled to hear Farron had a picture of Thatcher in his bedroom.
“Sad to think that probably over half of UK male politicians at one point in their socially awkward youth cracked one out to Maggie Thatcher,” one Twitter user posted.
“l have never had a poster of any Tory on my bedroom wall. The thought of a Tory staring at me each morning is awful,” quipped Labour’s Shadow Education Minister Angela Rayner.