Your leader (22 March) writes off the SDP as a blip in history and its values as being in search of a contemporary home. It only looks this way from the haughty heights of the traditionalist Labour right. Decentralisation was at the heart of the SDP's founding Limehouse declaration and it is an ex-SDP student, Greg Clark, who as a minister now drives the localism bill in parliament. Before that another former SDP activist, Lord Andrew Adonis, began to unlock parent power through the academies revolution under Blair and Brown. Meanwhile, Andrew Cooper has recently joined No 10 as head of policy and at least three ex-SDP members sit in cabinet. Those of us young enough to have joined the SDP after the 1983 elections found our home in "the radical centre" that stretches between the Blairites on the left and the Cameroonians on the right. Those who decry that ideological victory are simply older or were never sympathetic in the first place.
Francis Davis
Southampton
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/30/coalitions-sdp-roots
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