If any breakaway “centrist” party was going to thrive, it was the Social Democratic party. Their founder members were political titans: David Owen, a former foreign secretary at the age of just 38; Shirley Williams, one of Labour’s most prominent women, an education secretary who fronted party political broadcasts; Roy Jenkins, a chancellor, deputy leader, president of the European commission and once a likely future leader.
They had gravitas, intellectual heft – Jenkins was a prolific author – and a body of ideas. They received adulation in the media. At the end of 1981, one Gallup poll gave them an astonishing 50.5% of support, light years ahead of both the Tories and Labour. “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government!” David Steel, leader of the SDP’s Liberal allies, triumphantly told his activists. And yet, a year later, the SDP-Liberal Alliance and political reality collided: it achieved 25.4%, a decent share for a new political party, but under our electoral system that delivered just 23 seats. Even though Margaret Thatcher’s Tories had lost half a million votes compared with 1979, her party won a landslide and were free to transform Britain with ruinous social consequences.
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