Only a week ago I was at the LGA’s Culture Conference, hearing praise and promises of eternal co-operation from political spokespeople and quangos alike. Yesterday I was attending Nick Clegg’s campaign launch in Watford (I was one of the big Sal Brinton placards at the back). Campaigning is a great leveller and hurrah for that.

But there is more to this transition than a move from day job to unpaid postal worker. What is said at conferences to the conference hosts differs starkly from the reality on the ground. The current government is unlikely to last and so the limited promises of the minister are overtaken by purdah: the minister is now just a Labour politician.

Likewise the official opposition reassures the cultural sector that we (and especially local government ) are important and will be respected and cherished. But the centralisers who will dominate a Tory Cabinet (should this occur) will hardly allow local government the freedom it needs to deliver the arts or sport.

In a last gasp, the Culture, Tourism and Sport Select Committee – a discredited committee of a discredited parliament – has again peddled the idea that council newspapers are undermining the local and regional newspaper sector. This laughable claim was recently dismantled by the Audit Commission.

What do you do if a quango gives you the wrong answer? Find another quango. So the Office of Fair Trading has been urged to look into the affair. It will no doubt conclude what the Audit Commission did before it: that there’s no case to answer. Presumably a third quango will then be pressed into service on behalf of the newspaper industry.

Meanwhile, the Digital Economy Bill – a wicked piece of illiberalism – zooms towards the statute book, rushed through the Commons like so many other assaults on our liberty.

But perhaps the saddest moment over the past few days was a letter to the Times from the Chief Executive of Museums Libraries and Archives Council, who had told us the day before how much he values councils. I will quote in full:

Shirley Burnham (letter, Mar 31) rightly points out the primacy of books in public libraries; she is also correct to imply an absolute need for local authorities, charged with funding and leading library services, to engage openly with the public about proposed changes and developments.

We point out to local leaders that public libraries are an opportunity, not a cost; an extraordinary asset in communities, not a service in decline. The significance of libraries is too lightly regarded in some places, where bean-counting overshadows the wealth of positive outcomes for people.

Quite what caused local government and councillors (and accountants for that matter) to suffer such vulgar abuse is a mystery.

But it underlines the fact that we have an almighty battle on our hands if we are to stand up for local government against the quango state, Whitehall and Westminster in the next parliament.