The Liberal Democrat manifesto is coming together nicely

The secrecy rules which cover meetings of the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee are rather more sensible for our detailed discussions of the party’s next general election manifesto than they are on some other occasions, so you’ll understand why I skip over the details of today’s long meeting to go through the current state of the plans.

Overall, however, it was a very positive meeting with a lot of agreement from across the different viewpoints in the party represented on FPC, both on the big picture questions of overall message and financial policy and on many important details.

There has been a welcome shift on several of these over the last few weeks. I suspect if pushed people will disagree over how much that shift was caused by last month’s election results compared to whether it would have happened anyway, but that doesn’t matter so much as long as the evolution of the manifesto thoughts is in the right direction, which it certainly seems to be.

That does all leave rather puzzling some of the false steps over ministers overstepping the bounds of the party’s policy-making process in the recent past. Why do that if you’re not trying to bounce the party into some controversial decision? At least conspiracy indicates careful thought and sensible execution of plans – so it looking like it has mostly been a case of cock-up rather than conspiracy is not quite as reassuring as it should be…!

There will still be some quite chunky individual issues to debate at the party’s October conference (register here) and if you’d like me to come and take part in a discussion with your local party members about the manifesto and how they can influence its content, do get in touch.

UPDATE – Here’s The Guardian‘s coverage of the party’s manifesto plans:

Nick Clegg will promise that his party’s election manifesto will be written solely to highlight the big changes Britain still needs, and not with an eye to setting out plans that either Labour or the Conservatives might accept in a post election coalition negotiation.

He will also promise that the manifesto being prepared by a team led by the schools minister David Laws will not contain a raft of policy “red lines” ahead of such coalition negotiations, but instead include the party’s priorities for the next parliament.

He will argue: “If this Parliament was about repairing the British economy, the next one must be about rewiring it. If the last parliament was about rescue, the next must be about renewal: rescue to renewal”.

The Clegg promise at a press briefing came as his aides continued to differentiate themselves from the Conservatives, saying Liberal Democrat secretaries of state will not be following their Conservative counterparts in “vindictively blocking” trade union fees from being automatically checked off a civil servant’s salary.