NORMAN'S 'WISDOM'

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Looking back on Today's daily anticipations of the various upcoming manifesto launches finds Norman Smith acting, as ever, as anticipator-in-chief.
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On Monday, chatting to John Humphrys, he prepared us for Labour's launch, playing it with a very straight bat. Ignoring JH's sarcastic opening question ("And Norman, are you excited?" ), he called it a "deliberately restrained manifesto" and faithfully reported Labour's explanations for why this is the case. He talked of their theme of "spreading excellence" and then spent a surprising amount of time faithfully outlining Labour's ideas for police reform. There were no doubts or criticisms cast whatsoever.
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On Tuesday, again chatting to John Humphrys - and, as always, using the word 'Tory' rather than 'Conservative' throughout' - Norman turned to the Tories. He sketched out some of their ideas and then drew out what he regards as the essential philosophical difference between them and Labour: "The choice basically is between a Cameron government which would be suspicious of big government solutions, of more legislation, and would look to empower individuals against the Brown government which would view the state as enabling, empowering. helpful..er..rather than leaving it up to the individual to sort out difficult situations for themselves." This description was going fine until that last clause, which makes the Tories sound uncaring - as if they merely want us all to sink or swim by ourselves. 'The vulnerable' beware! An implied criticism then followed, as he described the Conservative...sorry Tory...manifesto as "somewhat light, shall we say, on deficit reduction". How forthcoming Labour was on Monday he didn't say.
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Wednesday saw Norm and John talking about the Lib Dems. Norm outlined what the Lib Dems say about their own virtues, dropping in mentions of Labour's dependance on "big union money" (though not mentioning Unite by name) and the Conservatives' dependence on "wealthy businessmen, like Lord Ashcroft." Norm cautioned about overcrowding on the "trust terrain", saying that Labour have been saying '"You can trust us on securing the recovery, and you can trust us on public services with various guarantees for public services" and the Tories saying "We're going to trust the people"'. He said the Lib Dems could be encouraged by how things were going before moving onto a favourite theme of his: "So we do begin to move into what I would call hung parliament territory. Just looking at a couple of the polls today (he certainly was doing literally that, ignoring the third poll that proffered the hope of a small Tory majority!) again holding out the prospect that there could be a hung parliament."
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For much more on the BBC's shennigans with polls, here's a link that will carry you to all Not a sheep's keen-eyed reports on this ongoing scandal:
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/search/label/Polls