I haven’t had chance to write up the Lib Dem manifesto, but the good news is that it’s the shortest of the three (only 56 pages) and the prettiest of the three, too. Lib Dem design has improved massively over the last election, even if they’ve not quite updated their language to go with it. I’ve written so often and so frequently about the pointlessness and meaningless of the word ‘fair’ that to see the Lib Dems making it that Number One Issue would be utterly soul destroying… you know, if I was still a member.

But anyway, I thought I’d do Wordle mashups of the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos like what I done gone and did with the Labour one. It serves as a useful exercise in what’s going through the heads of the people who write the damn things.

Somewhat unsurprisingly (considering this happened the last time I wordled a Lib Dem manifesto, LIBERAL!!! comes out top, featuring both as the name of the party and as the explanation for why they follow specific policies. It’s a shame that, like ‘fair’, Liberal is another one of those meaningless hurrah words whose beauty depends entirely on the beholder. Nice to see ‘people’ getting such a pride of place, but like Labour’s manifesto, the favourite topic is pretty clear.

So, ‘people’ makes it three for three – but it’s overwhelmingly the Tory’s favourite word… followed curiously by ‘new’ and ‘government’ which probably shouldn’t be a surprise. Notable absence? ‘Britain!’ Presumably this means that instead of writing, “Britain needs a High Tech Economy based on the Green Industry of the Future” they’ve written “Our people need a High Tech Economy based on the Green Industry of the Future, and the only way they’re going to get that is if they vote for a new government.”

Apologies to the handful of readers who have stuck with this blog through my hideous writers block (with co-morbid seasonal affective disorder) only to have me come back writing about such trivial things instead of getting to the nitty gritty. In my defence… hmmm you know? I have no defence. It’s a fair cop, guvner.

UPDATE: I actually did manage to read a manifesto in full. Yep, the UKIP one. Only 16 pages, which was thrillingly terse and designed for the busy executive blogger on the go. Might have something to say about it. Possibly. It’s a strange mix of demanding the removal of the shackles on the British Government so the British Government can put more shackles on stuff it currently can’t, along with some actually really great policies I could support, with some old school social conservatism which I couldn’t. It is, however, refreshingly weird if a little disquietingly obsessed with immigrants.