Updated archive of Liberal Democrat general election manifestos

Liberal Democrat general election manifestos archive

I’ve updated my archive of Liberal Democrat general election manifestos which as well as the text of each general election manifesto for the party now also includes even more associated documents such as costings supplements.

As with most archives, it is still a work in progress so do let me know if you have a copy of any relevant documents not yet included.

Why do the archive? Even in this internet-enabled world, it can be surprisingly hard to track down older documents. So it is partly for my convenience, and also the hope that others may find the archive of Lib Dem manifestos useful too.

It’s true that text-only versions of past manifestos are widely available online for all the parties. But, they miss out two key pieces of information.

First, the design and layout choices made in putting a manifesto together. How much emphasis was there for a particular policy? What was the style in which the party was presenting itself? You can only answer such questions if you see the manifesto as it was intended to be seen. Much is lost if all you see is a stripped down version of uniform streams of text.

Moreover, the main general election manifesto itself is usually but one of a mini-ecosystem of documents. Other relevant information – such as the policy costings – are frequently in separate documents.

Hence this archive presents both the designed version of Liberal Democrat general election manifestos and also other associated documents. That includes costings documents and ‘mini-manifestos’ focusing on specific policy areas.

Thank you

Thank you especially to Christian Moon who has provided many documents to fill in the gaps in my own hard disk’s records. Thank you also to the many people who commented favourably on the idea when I first floated it.

If you have copies of any other documents which are worth adding and are not yet listed in the Lib Dem manifesto archive, please do get in touch. That would be much appreciated.