Liberal Democrats to run a ‘you decide’ election manifesto

The Liberal Democrats are to embark on a radical new approach in the next General Election. 

With the rise of Reform and the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats are facing even less attention than usual. This is despite Ed Davey’s recently launching his party’s local government campaign by eating a Cornish pasty while suspended upside-down from a wind turbine. 

Media had been invited to the event but had to decline at the last minute as news of a Cabinet Office clarification on civil service overnight expenses rules was announced. 

He has also pledged to sing “Is this way the Amarillo” in Welsh whilst swimming with sharks at the London Aquarium, but there are concerns that even this may not attract media attention.

The Lib Dem campaign team plan to adapt a poster from the last Liberal-led government in British history, namely the famous “Kitchener wants you” poster from the first world war. This will be adapted to ‘you decide’. 

A spokesperson argued:

“We have always claimed to be the party of localism. Why not take this to its logical conclusion and run different manifestos in each constituency in the country?

The needs of Merthyr Tydfil and Tunbridge Wells are obviously very different. When one set of voters wants us to be a left-wing alternative to Labour, and another set of voters want us to be alternatives to the conservatives, only the Liberal Democrats can really meet voters expectations”.

One prospective parliamentary candidate, Charles Laton, not only advocates this strategy but personally plans on taking this even further. On a campaigning session in Exeter, he proudly told the OMS:

“I’ll be varying my pitch across the constituency. On this road, I told residents that I opposed the new school car park on environmental grounds. However, yesterday I just told the teachers who want to get to work that I supported it. 

We have substantial experience of such flexibility from our position, or should I say positions, on housing policy. 

Across Britain, we’ve successfully campaigned against housing developments when they threaten car parks, badgers, house prices or just general vibes or something. Yet somehow, we’ve been able to get a bunch of young people paying a fortune in rent to support us. Voters are really not very intelligent. 

Walking with Laton and delivering leaflets containing lots of colourful graphs was his party agent Annabel Fay-Kerr. She also supported the proposal:

“I think this sort of flexibility shows that only the Liberal Democrats can really be the party for everyone” 

One internal opponent of the plans is former Lib Dem MP, Oona Fence, who questioned whether committing to policies at all, even completely inconsistent ones, was a good strategy. 

“I find that reducing politics to matters of principles, order of priorities or choices between different options merely plays to the far-right in their attempts to divide people, and we need to resist that toxicity”.

Since losing her seat in the last election, Oona Fence has become ‘an instructor in advanced emotional healing through yoga’, and believes the principle she applies in her practice could be effectively applied to politics. 

However, amongst the Liberal Democrats parliamentary contingent, she is very much in the minority. Speaking from the House of Lords, Liberal Democrat grandee Andrew Conn-Mann, 

“As a party, we were at our most electorally popular under Charles Kennedy who radiated an ‘everyman’ image. We need to learn from that, and be an ‘everyman’ party, simultaneously appealing to disgruntled voters from Reform, Greens, UKIP, Your Party, the Islamic Alliance, Sinn Fein and MAGA”.

When asked about the practical consequences of such a ‘place-based manifesto approach’ if the Liberal Democrats got into government, a party spokesperson declined to comment and then ran away as fast as he could. Another spokesperson appeared to not understand what ‘government’ was and be confused about the concept of ‘consistency’.

We did approach other parties for comment, but none could be bothered. 

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