QUENTIN LETTS: The Lib Dems’ launch was emotively manipulative

The Lib Dems launched their manifesto in the City of London at a Scandinavian-vibes loft space sometimes used for yuppie weddings.

Party leader Sir Edward Davey – he’s the one up to his moobs in the Post Office Horizon scandal – came bustling in to make a father-of-the-bride speech. 

He crinkled his eyes, rubbed his hands and paused at clap-lines, which was a bit awkward the couple of times no one clapped him.

His speech was schmaltzy. It was aw-shucks. It was, as they say in spin-doctor circles, ‘courageously personal’, which is another way of saying it was revoltingly American and one of the most emotively manipulative pieces of saccharine hucksterism thrust down my gullet for decades.

Sir Edward is trying to chew both ends of the corncob at the same time. Terrified of stinky fallout from the Post Office affair, he has been portraying himself as a goonish farceur, doing water-sport pratfalls on the campaign trail and yesterday going for a ride on the Colossus rollercoaster at the Thorpe Park funfair, Surrey. 

Party leader Sir Edward Davey at his manifesto launch today. The party leader delivered a ‘courageously personal’ speech

At one point he choked back tears. He will consider this a presentational success. On me, alas, it merely had the effect of a slice of overly rich carrot cake

The Lib Dem leader has also been making his way around the country and enjoying various hi jinks on the campaign trail including conducting interviews on paddle-boards and on roller coasters

Behind him on that ride I think I spotted the Lib Dems’ South Shropshire candidate, property consultant Matthew Green, who is also known as ‘the Gypsy King’ for helping certain types of client build on the Green Belt. Ah, the eco-friendly Lib Dems!

Simultaneous to his high jinks, Sir Ed wants us to feel sorry for him, so he keeps talking about being a carer and having been orphaned as a teenager. He did this again at the manifesto launch, describing his parents’ early deaths.

At one point he choked back tears. He will consider this a presentational success. On me, alas, it merely had the effect of a slice of overly rich carrot cake. After you with that sick bowl, Perkins.

Some 30 activists created a backdrop. Sir Edward was introduced by Munira Wilson, MP for Twickenham, who might make a better party leader. She hailed Sir Ed as ‘our paddle-boarding, water-sliding, blue-wall-destroyer-in-chief’. 

Cue a few whoops and some triumphal music piped so quietly, it could have been Pie Jesu at a municipal crem’.

There was a sticky pause before Sir Edward clambered his way past TV crews and massed plastic chairs to greet Mrs Wilson. Having finally got there, he adopted an expression that said ‘what, a surprise birthday party, pour moi? – you shouldn’t have!’

With some added faux-surprise that his Norman Wisdom japes had made him ‘a bit of a ‘meme’ on social media’, he launched into the oft-told tragedy of his childhood.

Those of us at the side of the room could see every word of this Tiny Tim tear-jerker laid out on the autocue. So could the activists behind Sir Ed.

Seconds earlier they had all been doing toothy delight. Now, as they read the coming paragraphs of his domestic weepy, they quickly had to readjust their chops to sad mode. Not everyone managed the transition.

Soon Sir Edward was deep into ‘my caring story’, biting his lips and narrowing his gaze as he gazed into the nearest TV camera. We heard about the weekly walks he took to collect his mum’s pension and how he visited her in hospital in his school uniform.

One does not mean to question the distress he underwent. But to regurgitate such fare at an election manifesto launch, and to do it with such palpably practised wringing of the handkerchief, felt odd.

Then he went skipping off to Thorpe Park for photo opportunities to publicise a manifesto that would heap taxes on the middle-classes, send more aid money abroad and have us rejoin the EU. Yippee, boys and girls.

Oh, and he said Hampshire was in the home counties. I know of a certain old bird in Warsash who’d put him right. She would chase him into the River Hamble, wielding a lavatory brush, until he withdrew such an unforgivable slur.