Dr Owen, you were the broken mould on British politics!

The ever self aggandizing Dr Owen on r4's The Reunion prog was reminiscing yet again about the Sdp's 15 minutes of infamy back in the 80's with the usual blinkered conceit of the deluded.

He may not have understood why the whole thing was such a damp squib and truly believed he and his party was some sort of radical departure from political business as usual but it just doesn't stand up to any analysis whatsover and the British public saw through it pretty quickly.

He would not join the Liberals - why - because they were not  wing enough and the further clue as to why the whole thing was a vanity project of thwarted egos re the clear statists Messrs Owen, Shirley Williams and Jenkins  was the narcissism of small differences between them and the hard leftists who at by this time taken over the Labour Party. Owen may look like a tory but he was a man of the left and still is to this day. He just opposed Labour tactics believing, quite correctly, that it would keep them out of power for a generation but principally there was never enough difference between Sdp Labour and liberals for anyone to tell them apart or to get  out of bed to vote for them and they merely served the purpose of splitting the left three ways rather than the traditional two with the result that Thatcher stormed to power for a third time in '87.

He likes to blame the first past the post system but this is to confuse process with principle. The same system prevailed pre 1920's but it did not stop the formation of the Labour Party and it's eclipse of the Liberals to become the second most powerful political force in British politics and then to end up in actual government. All excuse making and nothing more.Bad loser!