Politics of the Centre — the SDP

    This article will be of interest primarily to people in the UK. I hope some of our friends elsewhere will also be interested.

    SDP stands for the Social Democratic Party. It was formed in 1981 as a breakaway movement from the Labour Party, which had moved significantly to the Left under the leadership of Michael Foot. It didn’t do very well electorally, and eventually joined forces with the Liberal Party, which renamed itself the Liberal Democrat Party. I thought therefore, I assume like many other people, that it no longer existed — I hadn’t noticed it fielding candidates in any elections. So I was surprised, when attending a recent meeting of Leavers of Britain¹, to discover that it’s still going. Its leader William Clouston and Patrick O’Flynn, a candidate in the forthcoming European elections, both spoke there. I was immediately interested, had a brief chat with Mr. Clouston, took his card and a copy of the party’s New Declaration².

    I’ve written articles previously on various relevant themes:

• the need, from a spiritual perspective, for centrist politics³
• the Earth as a living being, thus a superorganism, and the need for humans to recognise that they are participants in the process of its awakening⁴
• why the European Union, while appearing to be moving in the direction of integration, thus the superorganism, is not the answer, and why instead we should remain independent, sovereign nations, obviously cooperating and being on friendly terms with others like us⁵

    The SDP has no stated spiritual perspective or agenda. It is interesting, therefore, that on many issues it is in agreement with much of what I’ve written. For example, it is a breath of fresh air to find a centre party coming out so strongly against the European Union. Brexiteers on the whole tend to be on the right of the Conservative Party, or to the left of Labour, or even further to the hard left. The centrist groupings — moderate Labour and Conservative MPs, the Liberal Democrats, and the new breakaway Independent Group, otherwise known as Change UK, and subsequently The Independent Group for Change (following threatened legal action)  — are all dedicated Remainers. Here, however, is the SDP’s position on the European Union:

    “We consider the nation-state to be the upper limit of democracy. Along with the family, we regard it as indispensable to the solidarity and concern for our fellow citizens. We regard supranationalism as a neoliberal ideology aimed at neutering domestic politics and placing the most important issues beyond the reach of ordinary voters. The European Union or any other supranational entity is not — and will never be — a social democratic enterprise”.

    Well said! However, I’m not in complete agreement with everything they say on this issue. I’ll discuss this further, and some of the SDP’s other policies in future articles.

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