Sir Ed Davey kicked off manifesto week by launching his party’s document this afternoon in East London. In true Lib Dem style, it is a weighty tome of 114 pages – the product of months of painstaking care by party strategists. Their task was to reconcile the desires of the activist base with the demands of Tory voters that the leadership is trying to woo across the South of England. ‘We are a genuine party democracy – sadly’, joked one of Davey’s aides to me at last year’s conference. That tradition means that, unlike the Conservatives, the Lib Dem document cannot be cooked up in a matter of weeks and take little account of their grassroots’ demands.
There is a potential for conflict between the Lib Dem platform and the kind of ‘Blue Wall’ voters it is hoping to entice
The task then was twofold: being careful not to spook true-blue Tories while giving Lib Dem members a reason to keep enthusiastically knocking up doors.
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