Cameron And The SDP

There are more former members of the SDP in the Shadow Cabinet than on the Lib Dem front bench. The Cameron project is the SDP's path back to power. Somewhat ironically considering that John Cleese used to do Party Political Broadcasts for the SDP, there is now something of a "don't mention the War" attitude to that party. Could it be because, when so many of today's media grandees were Communists or Trotskyists and entirely open about it, the SDP was trying, however imperfectly, to provide a home for those whom they had driven out of Labour?

And the SDP was very imperfect. Apparently unable to see that the unions were where the need for a broad-based, sane opposition to Thatcherism was greatest, it was hysterically hostile to them, and instead made itself dependent on a single donor, later made a Minister by Blair without the rate for the job. It had betrayed Gaitskellism over Europe, betrayed Christian Socialism (and, lest we forget, Gaitskellism) over nuclear weapons, adopted the decadent social libertinism of Roy Jenkins, and adopted the comprehensive schools mania of Shirley Williams.

Cameron has all those four political faults. What is more, he is heavily dependent on Demos, the Communist Party continuity organisation. And he has promised a peerage and Ministerial office to the old Trotskyist Geoff Mulgan, as well as being surrounded by the 1980s hired help of apartheid South Africa and of Pinochet's Chile. Old SDP members and sympathisers who were taken in by Blair's "centre ground" blather are making the same mistake with Cameron.

Or is there more to it than that...?