Whatever happened to the Natural Law Party?

They promised us "bubbling bliss", so where are our yogic flying heroes today?

When I were t'lad, whenever party political/election broadcast season came around, there was one I would always look forward to.

Why? Well, what would you do if there were a political party promising to teach you how to fly?

The story begins in 1992, when practitioners of Transcendental Meditation formed a political party as they saw that wider society might benefit from their form of mediation, which straddles between a religious movement based around Hinduism and a straightforward self-improvement course. Transcendental Meditation was founded in India by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and one of its key tenets is "Yogic flying".

For the unfamiliar, yogic flying looks something like this :

So it's not really flying, more like using your own testicles as a space hopper.

I tried doing this the other day to see if I have what it takes but almost dislocated my knees. I am ill-prepared to make the transformation.

And transformation it would be. The Natural Law Party believed that a concentrated number of yogic flying experts – the square route of 1% of the world's population, which at the time would mean ~7,000 experts - would create a sense of "bubbling bliss" which would filter through into every facet of life known as the Maharishi effect. This is supposed to reduce crime, improve overall health and improve the economy.

When you think of it like that, it's probably an easier promise to keep than capping tuition fees.

The funniest thing is it actually worked!

The Natural Law Party promised to bounce crime out of the UK.

Well....alright, no it didn't.

There've been claims that Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi effect has directly led to drops in crime. Presumably the Conservatives and Lib Dems have been doing Skippy impressions as they slash police and probation budgets.

In 1993, 4,000 yogic flyers descended on Washington DC and violent crime dropped by as much as 23% over eight weeks....except murders, which hit a record high. As many people do, they confused correlation with causation and the academic behind the study was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994. That isn't a good thing.

If that sounds outlandish, the Natural Law Party had other stances which are now relatively mainstream, and could nowadays be considered an unholy mix of Green and UKIP policies.

For example, they opposed genetically modified food, support alternative medicine and organic farming, wanted to ban arm sales, opposed many aspects of the European Union and supported tax cuts.

They were a well-financed party too, managed to put up more than 300 candidates in the 1992 House of Commons election, contested all seats at the 1994 European election (apparently the first party to do so in a European election), had almost 200 candidates in 1997 and contested the 1999 elections too.

In each of these elections, every single Natural Law Party candidate lost their deposit, and the party never managed to get more than 0.2% of the vote across the whole UK - that has to be some sort of record. In Wales, they put up candidates in the 1999 Assembly election on regional lists, and got 0.4% of the vote – managing to out-poll the Socialist Alliance and Communist Party.

With hundreds of thousands of pounds disappearing in lost deposits, the party de-registered in 2003 and yogic flying hasn't graced our screens since. Come election time we get yogic lying instead.

So, would you be prepared to become one of the 7,000?