Is it pre-negotiation for another joint programme of government? Or a vision of how the country could be different? The Lib Dem manifesto, launched on Wednesday morning in a clubby warehouse venue in Battersea amid actual whooping from loyal troops, is designed to be both.
Oddly, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, so effective every week in taking on all comers in his LBC phone-in programme Call Clegg, took two questions from supporters and only one from the irritated lobby correspondents . To add insult to injury, his mic cut out in the middle of the answer. Moments later the BBC feed died, leaving your sofa correspondent watching an archive programme on the Liberals’ 1962 Orpington byelection victory. Very good for yellow team morale but not, to be fair, hugely pertinent.
It was all, I am told, hurried along at the end to make sure the broadcast political editors got time for their sit-down interviews with the leader before the all-important lunchtime news bulletins.
Is it a sign, as Adam Boulton of Sky News tweeted, of the declining importance of the press? Reprehensible lack of transparency? Or a self-defeating move for the party on the only day of the campaign where news editors have space set aside to cover the Lib Dems?
.@greenmiranda alas we are also witnessing real decline of power of the press. Politicians can't be bothered, default most shill for Tories
— Adam Boulton (@adamboultonSKY) April 15, 2015
Probably, again, it’s a bit of all three – Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s press chief, has caused permanent grumbling among newspaper reporters for, as a former senior BBC news editor, always putting the needs of the broadcasters first. And during the life of the coalition, Clegg went out of his way, with regular press conferences, to make himself available to scrutiny. In contrast, bloggers recorded each day that passed without a Cameron appearance at an open press Q&A.
Reckless, therefore, to give away an earned advantage this week, when the journalists are getting increasingly grumpy about having the microphone physically taken away from them (the Tories on Tuesday) and being jeered at by party supporters (Ukip on Wednesday and Labour on Monday, despite Ed Miliband’s plea to be polite and welcoming.)
It was the day the Lib Dems, rightly focused day-to-day on the “ground war” in their efforts to hold as many seats as possible, had the opportunity to take to the air (or airwaves). Even if those dire national poll ratings will never again achieve the liftoff of Cleggmania, there has to be a national message to reinforce the arguments in the leaflets and on the doorsteps and get the yellow bar chart up into double figures.
But the policies, steered through a tortuous but endearingly serious and democratic process over the last two years – even education, green issues and the other high-priority areas on the manifesto cover, the basis of any new coalition deal – are going to take a back seat as Team Clegg double down on their core message of providing a centre ground “insurance policy” in a hung parliament.
A new contest is being set up – do you want a deputy prime minister from Ukip or the SNP, or the Lib Dems? It’s a high-risk strategy – opening up coalition as the number one argument for voting Lib Dem invites another 22 days of questioning on what might happen in negotiations on the other side of polling day.
But with the Conservatives now matching their brazenly uncosted spending pledges with brazenly implausible claims that they will win a majority, it could be crucial in those Lib-Con marginals across the south-west and south-east where having wreckers or ideologues in government frightens the horses.
