“Loony policies were actually quite sensible”

Never, he insisted should we close down the possibility of discovery by writing off the unusual, bizarre or even the more offensive ideas without a good look first. We should always remain curious.

Imagine then, as we career towards the General Election, if you could only draw out a few nuggets of inspiration amongst the grey menu of policy blancmange.

Why not look at a Party you might never have seriously considered before?

A Party operating under the strapline “vote for insanity” perhaps? A party that was set up to lampoon and satirise British Politics through the promotion of deliberately bizarre policies. I refer not to UKIP or the Greens. Could you in fact be a Loony?

Before the Monster Raving Loony Party was formed in the 1980’, Screaming Lord Sutch stood in parliamentary elections for the National Teenage Party. David Sutch considered it insane that teenagers should be unable to vote by dint of their immaturity while the adults running the country were busy falling into scandals like the Profumo Affair. At the time the voting age was 21.

Despite its satirical nature, ‘mad’ monster ideas other than reducing the voting age to 18 have also featured in Loony manifestos and become law. For example the Loonies championed passports for pets and all day pub opening.

Furthermore, with main stream parties now arguing for a voting age reduction to 16 following its use in the Scottish Independence vote, it seems apparent that the loonies were not entirely mad after all and some of their policies have already taken over the asylum.

Another major policy impact came when their first councillor “Alan Hauling Laud Hope” mentioned on the BBC that butter and milk were being dumped down abandoned mine shafts because of EEC common agricultural policy rules to maintain prices.

This led to the not so mad redistribution of surpluses to the needy and charities. During the early 1990s at one point in England, 16 councillors were elected while having the handle “Raving Loony” accredited to their politics.

Don’t you just love the British People?

Today, the Loonies would like us to sell our castles back to the French to pay down the deficit and to plan for HMRC to issue Nectar points to taxpayers.

The lesson is, all ideas are good ideas because it is only ideas that change the world.