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ALL the party manifestos are out – bar Labour’s – and the only one that matters, the SNP’s, came out last week.

The launch was an event. A spectacle. A cross between an American sports event and a Barbara Streisand concert , with the associated emotional overload.

It is part of the modern election ritual. Part of the form and planned grid of the campaign which political and media professionals know and understand.

(Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

We have to question all this fuss about party manifestos .

They used to be thin things filled with vague pronouncements. Then they became thick and detailed. Now they are filled with photos and sunlit shots.

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There are two positive examples of British manifestos – Labour 1945 and Thatcher 1979.

The Labour one, Let Us Face the Future, was 27 pages long – short, concise and clear. It said things like: “The nation wants food, work and homes.”

It changed Britain for the better in ways that continue to make our lives better.

The Tory one was a mere 32 pages. It was more sure on direction of travel than detail, about smaller government, lower taxes, trade union reform. It heralded a revolution, which still shapes a large element of our world.

Then there was the anti-manifesto of Labour in 1983: 13,000 words taping together a bitterly divided party as they unconvincingly presented themselves to the voters.

Now we have the manifesto as personal covenant between leader and the public.

(Image: PA Wire)

Tony Blair, innovator and populariser of modern politics, broke new ground with the 1997 New Labour manifesto Because Britain Deserves Better. Big pages, huge photos, Blair on the cover.

The SNP’s 2011 manifesto Re-elect had a huge Alex Salmond on the front.

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Now we have Re-elect with Nicola Sturgeon everywhere – the direct descendants of the New Labour approach. About connection, trust, the personal and presidential.

The SNP manifesto, despite its 76 pages, is as important for what it doesn’t say as for what it does.

In the My Vision introduction, Sturgeon writes that the manifesto’s contents are about a “fair, equal and prosperous nation” but that “the journey” to this Scotland “is far from over”.

Under the banner The Next Steps to a Better Scotland are 11 sections – a healthier, smarter, wealthier Scotland and more. A section on Scotland’s Future is about constitutional change.

Empowered Scotland mentions revitalising local government but is short on specifics.

This is the official story of our nation – the well-meaning version of public good, believing it is unremittingly continuing the progress to a fairer, better land. It is what Alphabet Soup Scotland (SCVO, STUC, CBI) want to tell themselves and convince us of.

This was always questionable but it’s alarming now. Where is consideration of the hard choices and huge public spending cuts coming? But why bother with inconvenient facts when you can show sunlit uplands and selfies to carry yourself over the winning threshold?

The SNP have enormous goodwill behind them and could have confidently said there are rocky times ahead but that we are in trusted hands who will be honest and treat the public as adults and that we could get through this together. Instead, they have chosen a road of collective delusion.

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We know that manifestos are in part about keeping the morale up and making party members feel part of something bigger.

(Image: PA)

They also give a sense of community and uplift, as in the almost “we are family” aspect of the 2011 SNP manifesto – which showed personal events, from marriages to births and deaths, within the party.

In recent years, the SNP have been a growing, welcoming family, while Labour have become bitter and dysfunctional.

Despite this, there is a feeling that the age of Blair and New Labour spin has reduced the manifesto to a charade – a damning and corrosive development.

This is the time of peak SNP. It is now clear this isn’t about independence just now – unless Brexit changes that – or policy or detail but about “standing up for Scotland” and its interests.

This isn’t imaginative or radical politics but essentially defensive, waiting for events to turn your way, and in a curious manner, very traditionally Scottish.