22 June 2012

A journey round the SDP

Thanks to Mark Pack's posting on Lib Dem Voice I visited the so-called SDP's website.  And a jolly good read it is too.

It starts off with the statement:

"Formed in 1981 by four senior Labour party members – David Owen, Roy Jenkins , Shirley Williams and Bill Rogers. The SDP was eventually to gain the support of 28 Labour MP’s and 1 Conservative MP...
...Believing Enough Is Enough, the SDP now stand alone as a patriotic, centre Left party that supports the ordinary people of this country, is for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and supports an English Parliament to give equality to all the Nations of the UK."

The idea that a party can claim the heritage of Jenkins, Rogers and Williams and in the same breath call for UK's withdrawal from the EU is somewhat bizarre to say the least.  But it gets better.

The election section has details of the fewer than 20 candidates the party fielded at the recent local elections (a significant number who appear to be town/parish candidates).  And it has an hilarious analysis of the relative success of their three candidates - all from the same family - in Birmingham who polled a grand total of 178 votes between them. 

But the best section is the entirely unself-aware section under 'About us' where they provide 'Some pictures from the past and the present' highlighting an old newsletter including an article calling for a federal Europe and a line or so down a picture of their current banner calling for EU withdrawal.

Sadly, they have set up their website so you cannot copy any pictures from it, but it is worth a visit even if only to confirm the approriateness of their web site provider - Moonfruit.

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