On quitting a political party

If you have never been a member of a political party you cannot appreciate quite what an intrinsic part of your existence it becomes. The leaflet delivery, post-meeting drinks in the pub, and annual pilgrimages to party conference all become crucial to your identity. Political activism is your hobby, your social life, and sometimes your profession all in one. I’m not saying it is necessarily a healthy or good thing, but that is the reality.

That is why there was such genuine anguish on the faces of the seven MPs who quit Labour to form the Independent Group on Monday. That is why the letters from those who followed – Joan Ryan from Labour, then Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen from the Conservatives – contained such regret. And that is why it was so easy for one of them, Luciana Berger, to introduce herself as the Labour and Co-operative MP for Liverpool Wavertree, before catching herself.

Watching the original seven announce their departure from Labour, I didn’t just admire them and appreciate the fact they were standing up for the Jewish community, my community. I also felt the utmost sympathy. I have left a political party myself, and remember just how hard it is.

Back in November 2014, I quit the Lib Dems. Prior to that, I had interned for an MP, served as a vice-chair of the party’s youth movement, proudly supported it in the media during the coalition years, stood for election, and even left a family holiday early to make a presentation at the party HQ. Finally, though, I was done.

I had had enough of the then Bradford MP David Ward getting away with what I considered to be antisemitic remarks, and I’d had enough of the appalling way the party had handled sexual misconduct allegations made against, and denied by, Lord Chris Rennard. (I myself had reported on those allegations.)

I had been a member of the Lib Dems for around five years when I quit, nothing compared to the decades of service accumulated by the 11 MPs who have now resigned from their parties. I did not hold elected office either. In the grand scheme of things I was nobody, but it was nonetheless heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, in fact, to leave.

I felt that I’d let down friends, abandoned colleagues and betrayed people who had supported me within the party. A massive, meaningful, part of my life was suddenly gone. Upon leaving a political party, a number of things you’d planned for or assumed you would do are no longer relevant. Your common bond with a large group of people ceases to exist in an instant.

If that is how it was for me, I can only imagine the range of emotions that group of Labour MPs experienced as they walked into a packed room to announce that they could no longer remain in a Jeremy Corbyn-led party. The Labour MPs might have gone first, but the feelings from those who left a Tory party in which the ERG tail is wagging the moderate dog will have been no less profound.

As it happened, in the build-up to the Lib Dem leadership election in 2017 I actually rejoined the party so I could vote for Tim Farron’s successor. Given that Vince Cable ultimately stood uncontested that didn’t quite go to plan… but despite the direct debit being back in place, I’ve never felt compelled to throw myself back into the party in the same way. Things move on. Once that link is broken, it is hard to restore. The real tribalists will never forgive a departure anyway.

The 11 MPs who, at the time of this writing, have quit their parties might feel that they want to return when Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has finished or Brexit is settled. Alternatively, they might just have hastened the end of their political careers. Or maybe, just maybe, they might have started a genuine political movement that will fill the political space vacated following the rather insipid recent efforts of the Lib Dems.

The Lib Dems are batting their eyes and showing a bit of leg to the Independent Group at the moment, saying they want to actively work with them on areas of agreement. But their failure to really capture the liberal centre-ground over the last few years has led to the need for the Independent Group, as much as the extremists in the Conservative and Labour parties have.

Even if the Independent Group becomes a proper party and is successful, these founding members will always have some sense of regret – that they could not fix their own parties from the inside, that they had to leave their political family. And however the events of this week play out, do not diminish the decisions of these MPs as those of careerists, or attempts at self-preservation. They will always wish they had not had to make them.