The Social Democratic Party and a Cunning Plan.

This is only likely to be of interest to members of the SDP.

This is directly the product of this post. But you don't need to read that (or the earlier two posts here and here either) to understand this.

The SDP is a pressure group/think tank as much as a political party. That is  one of its strengths. This strength often equals and possibly exceeds that of larger parties. SDP members (as a group of focused individuals) can comment on (say) public consultations in a way that members of other parties (like Labour) cannot. 

This cunning plan intends to increase the visibility and authority of the SDP and do some good at the same time. The crucial aspect to this plan is that volunteer SDP members need to spend no more than (say) 20 minutes actioning it at any one time. From then on they can do it again. Or not as they like. The commitment is minimal, is well defined, and has closure.

The best way to explain this is with an example.

This is based on a real and highly contentious plan to build a wind-farm in about the worst possible location you could imagine. If passed is likely to cause untold environmental and social damage. I have obfuscated the actual plan as I think this may well be a prime first candidate if we get this going. 

So from the top.

We find contentious planning/infrastructure projects that are open to public consultation. We review these and isolate  those which are the most damaging/unpopular or alternatively need support (I think here of Nuclear Power Plants).We get a group of volunteer SDP members to send in written objections/support for the scheme. But all of the heavy lifting is done. Each member need only devote about 20 minutes to each target application.

For the moment let us deal with this single abortion of a plan to desecrate a lovely part of the world. It was found by me this morning using Gemini AI with several other equally bad schemes in less than 2 minutes. 

One person (me in this case) uses AI to find the most important areas of objection to this project. Crucially the objections will be (or at least tend to be) focused on impacts to national assets and the environment. That is because it is likely that most or all of the volunteer SDP members will not live locally.

Notice this focuses on national asset impacts

        ◦ National Heritage & Cultural Value: 

        ◦ National Net-Zero / Carbon Policy (NPS EN-1): 

        ◦ Ecology & Migration: 

Each of these items are actually identified, detailed and populated by AI. Now we need to get this into a form for use by volunteer SDP members. The optimum number of members per target is 35 -50. But any number from 1 – 50 is better than nothing. We get AI to generate prototype letters. This is the optimum mix for this particular scheme according to Gemini.

Focus Angle	Target # of Letters	Primary Content Focus
National Heritage & Tourism	5 – 10 letters	Cultural value non-local tourism economy.
Peatland & Carbon Accounting	5 – 10 letters	Blanket bog destruction, failure of carbon payback math under NPS EN-1.
National Biodiversity & Ecology	5 – 10 letters	SPA/SSSI bird corridors, curlew/golden plover habitat loss.
Hydrology & Flood Precaution	5 – 10 letters	Catchment run-off risks to downstream infrastructure.
SDP Policy & Land Use Balance	5 – 10 letters	Strategic national energy policy, protecting finite landscape assets over speculative DCO schemes.

So where does the SDP angle come in? Well this has to be done carefully but then AI comes to the rescue again.

The Planning Inspectorate strictly ignores purely political, party-ideological, or non-land-use objections. Therefore, referencing the SDP must not sound like a party-political broadcast. Instead, we need to phrase it as a policy framework—for example:

 "As a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), I am writing to express serious concern over this development. The SDP supports a balanced, national approach to energy security and environmental conservation that protects our countryside, natural peatland carbon sinks, and national heritage assets from inappropriate industrialization…" Or similar

Or even just sign (aka after name) Like this:

Joe Bloggs (Member of the Social Democratic Party)

For each of the (in this case 5) areas above we get AI to generate  2 – 3 (maybe 5) different letters of objection. We ask members to review the contentious proposed development, then ask them to issue an objection. We let them select one of the 5 areas above. We ensure no more than the stated maximum number of members target that area. 

We provide the member with the prototype AI generated text for the letter. They will be asked to enter one/two sentences to personalise it.

“I regard this application with horror. It is an affront to both common sense and the area. I would like to particularly point out the following flaws with this application….. etc” 

Or they can if they so wish rewrite it based on the contents of the prototype they have received.

We tell them exactly who to send it to and when. They must be submitted over the time frame (in this case one month) not all together.

The result of this is that at the end of the consultation this abortion get 25 - 50 focused, coherent and damning objections launched against it. All from individuals rather than a group. But each objection will also be stamped SDP. No member need spend more than 20 minutes on it. When its submitted it’s done. Then they can do another one or not as they choose.

Of course there will be objections from others. Some will be focused and on target. But most will not. However heart-felt they may be, they will be ignored. 

Also there will be many pro-forma letters sent in but these will be filtered down (as they will in effect all be identical) to possibly only one objection. That’s why we need a variety of objections both across subject and format. The multiple objections from SDP members will have a visible impact on the count of valid objections.

Even so you may well ask, other than some obvious branding how does this increase the visibility of the SDP?

Because it doesn’t stop there. 

We have submitted (say) 25 - 50 objections to this one scheme. Now we tell everyone!

Particularly we tell any action groups opposing the scheme. We write letters to the local papers and Facebook groups as the SDP. We tell the locals that SDP members from across the country have rallied to support them. And our website address is….

This secondary effort will possibly take longer. But will in all likelihood only involve one or two people and is likely to be only a few hours per application.

Finally we can target the local council. Particularly independent councillors. We email them with what we done as a group and invite them to have a look at us. Try and get a dialogue going with them. Maybe entice them to cross the floor.

Particularly powerful would be to address any such contentious plans in areas where we have councillors already. Our councillors could promote the fact that their party is acting as one from right across the country to defend and protect their area.

That is just one contentious application. 

You know, I know, everyone knows, there are literally hundreds of similar dodgy planning applications. Like the never ending destruction of the green belt, wind-farms and solar farms destroying farm land, large numbers of illegal immigrants being placed in small villages, ruthless developers destroying neighbourhoods. The list is never ending.

This particular example above is a large contentious planning issue but there is no reason why this could not be used for/against other smaller applications. Things like a badly sited supermarket or even lack of places for kids in a local school. This is a target rich environment. 

All are examples of where people have been ignored/let down. People who are in effect disenfranchised are the most likely to reach out to a party that comes (or at least tries to come) to their rescue. 

We can work up a continuous stream of targets for objection/support right across the country and particularly in areas where the SDP has known support and activists.

The end result is the SDP gets seen across the country more and more. It’s visibility and authority increases. With any luck people will start asking for our support and crucially, joining us. 

So that is the idea. 

Will it work? I don’t know but it feels like it might. Not massive amount of effort either, and it potentially energises and directs the membership to action. 

All thoughts welcome.