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Spin machine: Manifestos
Labour's was described as Tony Blair's "little red book" while Michael Howard's was labelled "policy lite" by critics.
Now the Liberal Democrats have set out their plans in their traditional newspaper format.
A quick glance at the covers of each of the three manifestos tells you as much as you need to know about the state of the parties.
Labour's, famously, has no picture of Tony Blair. Instead, it offers the election slogan "Britain: Forward not back" not once but twice.
And as the party seeks to appeal to its traditional but now more disillusioned voters, the cover is bright red.
The Conservative manifesto cover also lacks a picture of the party leader, instead emphasising the six key themes of the party's campaign.
Handwritten, although with inconsistent capitalisation, it spells out: "More Police, cleaner hospitals, Lower Taxes, school discipline, controlled immigration, Accountability".
The Lib Dem paper-style manifesto feels slightly more flimsy but sticks to a format that has worked well for the party in the past.
Less formal than either Labour or the Conservatives, it is designed to look something like the local newspaper that the public might be used to reading each evening.
And it does indeed feature Charles Kennedy prominently on the cover and on eight of the other 19 pages - not only is he popular but he may also be the only Lib Dem politician that most of the public have a chance of recognising.
"We're on your side," says Kennedy's message on the front page, also handwritten.
One important election question is how much is the pricetag attached to the promises contained in each of the manifestos. An alternative is how much is the pricetag on each of the manifesto documents? Well, both Labour and the Conservatives price theirs at £2.50.
While Labour likes to hail its success on delivering a stable economy with low inflation, the cost of its manifesto has increased by 26 per cent since the 1997 election when its cover price was £1.99
The Lib Dems offer theirs via a premium rate phone line which costs £1.50 per minute from a BT landline. With a maximum call duration of 2.5 minutes, that could add £3.75 to the phone bill of a curious voter.
By way of alternative, of course, they are all freely available on the party websites.
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