Orbit Communications Director, Graeme Downie, harkens back to the halcyon days of manifestos and when campaigns used to be about trying to win.
In previous parliamentary elections, the launch of the manifestos usually took place quickly after the beginning of the short campaign, contained numerous policies with nice bullet points and were, you know, the documents that parties campaigned on for the next six weeks. Ah, those quaint, care-free days!
Since the campaign began some three weeks ago, so far only the Greens and Conservatives have bothered publishing a manifesto at all, the SNP have scheduled a launch for just two weeks before polling day and it seems as though Labour and the Lib Dems are deciding whether they are as well holding a quick photo-opp and clicking send on a PDF document rather than organise a launch. So, why are manifestos so pointless in this election?
Well, first let’s acknowledge a bit of reality. How many voters ever actually waited for all the manifestos to be published, read the policy commitments cover-to-cover and then made a rational decision on how to vote? Very few I suspect so perhaps parties are just catching up with reality.
Afterall, the first two TV debates and surrounding announcements have done more to inform the public about policy and positioning than a manifesto launch event usually would and generated the same or greater media coverage.
But one of the main reasons for the lack of lustre for the old ways in this election is more straight-forward. In previous Scottish Parliament elections, manifestos were essentially the beginning of the horse-trading for expected coalition negotiations of some kind. Even in 2011, with the SNP ahead in the polls, there was still an expectation that a deal of some kind of deal might be needed.
This year, that is not the case. The Scottish Conservatives acknowledged as much in their own manifesto this week, saying “It is clear that the SNP are on course to win the Scottish election.” Instead, the Tories and Labour are campaigning to come in second, the Greens are looking to increase seats within the single digits and the Lib Dems are battling against annihilation. The feeling amongst the parties seems to be that you don’t need detailed policies to achieve any of that so why lay out radical ideas that might be stolen by the presumed winners. But do voters in a democracy not deserve to see more fight and belief from these politicians rather than seeing them meekly accepting second place?
Which brings us to the SNP. They will be the government come the morning of 5 May, almost certainly with a second, supposedly impossible, majority. So surely their manifesto can be radical given they are going to win regardless? Well, it might be but I would expect them to stick to their pragmatic approach, building on the perception of the electorate that they are a competent government standing up for Scotland. And who can blame them, it’s a strategy that has worked since 2007 and surely it is incumbent upon the challengers to make up ground rather than the leader to abandon a winning strategy and risk falling back to the pack.
So, the muted manifestos this year are perhaps in keeping with the overall mood of the campaign itself. A result already confirmed and no parties really trying to win anything other than a battle with their own expectations.