Lib Dems launch their manifesto with fairy lights and funky music

The Lib Dems are launching their manifesto this morning. In keeping with their whole slightly bizarre national campaign, which has seen Nick Clegg touring the country apparently completing a Bucket List of fun things he’d like to do before a bruising election result, the launch appears more like a birthday party than stage-managed political event. There are multi-coloured disco lights, fairy lights and funky music.

Nick Clegg will speak shortly, and will warn that the Lib Dems are the only sensible alternative to the ‘coalition of grievance’ offered by other minor parties. As with his appearance in the TV debate, the Lib Dem leader wants to pitch his party as the stabilising choice in a chaotic era of minor parties and major parties that are, he claims, swinging off to left or right.

We’ve known the content of the manifesto for a while, as the Lib Dems have announced a great deal of it before the short campaign even began.