While the mainstream parties have refused to contest the Clacton by-election, one long-suffering fringe outfit has decided to join Count Binface in the race against Nigel Farage. William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party – remember them? – today announced that he will have a crack at the constituency. In a video posted on social media, he said:
I think it’s wrong that the major parties are boycotting this election because the people of Clacton deserve a better choice than Binface or Nigel Farage. And now they will. The SDP will make its case: Britain is not a shop or a charity, it’s our home. We must save and invest and rebuild our country. We can’t pretend anymore we’ve got to do what’s right.
Clouston also challenged Farage to meet him for a face-to-face debate and ‘let the voters decide cause that’s democracy’. The SDP leader has held the post since 2018, having previously spent 40 years working in town planning and commercial property development.
In its current incarnation, the SDP has stuck to its unusual marriage of old Labour economics and small-c conservative social policy – embracing free markets where they work while backing state ownership of natural monopolies and an active industrial strategy to rebuild British manufacturing. The party would establish national development institutions, introduce ‘Buy British’ public procurement and invest billions in regional industry, while returning the railways, energy networks and other strategic infrastructure to public ownership.
On immigration, the SDP takes a hard line: ending mass migration, withdrawing from the ECHR and Refugee Convention, deporting illegal arrivals and imposing much tougher conditions for permanent residence and citizenship.
Socially, it places the traditional family at the heart of government policy, promising transferable tax allowances for married couples, preference for married families in social housing and a state-backed programme to build 100,000 social homes a year.
Clouston may fancy his chances against Binface – though Farage could prove a rather harder nut to crack.
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