Lib Dem till I die?

My membership renewal for the Lib Dems came through this morning. It marks five years since I first joined the party.

This anniversary has reminded me of something I have been meaning to write about for a while. The continuum on which political activists of all parties sit.

Regular readers will know that I do a weekly podcast with an old friend of mine Emma Burnell who is a Labour activist. Emma joined Labour back when she was a teenager and has spent the last 20+ years campaigning for them and being a highly active member involved with all sorts of internal organisations over the years. She is happy to describe herself as a "tribalist" and whilst I have some quibbles with her over the exact definition of that word I agree that even by my stricter interpretation of its meaning, she is one!

Emma has made it clear that pretty much no matter what the Labour party did she would stick with them and if she was unhappy try to change the party from inside. As far as it is possible to be she is "Labour till she dies".

Another friend of mine, Caron Lindsay is a very long-standing member of my own party the Lib Dems. Like Emma, Caron has been involved with the party from a very young age and has been on various internal committees and held various positions within it. Also like Emma, Caron has made it clear that she is also in this party for the long haul. She is to all intents and purposes "Lib Dem till she dies".

Which brings us to me. Although I am of a similar generation to Emma and Caron and am probably obsessed with politics to a similar extent (and have been since I was a child) I chose not to get involved with a specific party until 2008. And I think this matters. I do not have as much vested within my chosen party. Whilst I know quite a few people within the Lib Dems fairly well they are all somewhat recent acquaintances. My long-standing friendships are all with people who are outside my party and in most cases politics altogether. So my roots do not go anywhere near as deep.

There are certainly scenarios I could imagine that could lead to me leaving the party. In fact I actually came pretty damn close earlier this year when the secret courts legislation was passed by my party in government in direct opposition to what the members of the party wanted. In the end I restricted myself to pledging to refuse to campaign for any Lib Dem MP who voted for the measure. But I had several dark nights of the soul and it could have gone the other way.

So despite being in different parties from each other, Emma and Caron probably have much more in common with each other as political activists than either of them do with me.

I think there is a continuum at work here. I am quite close to one end of it - very interested in politics and in a party but without a deep seated rooting within it and my friends are close to the other end of it - so heavily invested in their parties that they cannot really imagine ever leaving it.

I think parties need those of us who would consider leaving, performing a similar service to the floating voters in the wider electorate reminding party hierarchies that they cannot take their membership for granted.

Maybe if I stick around then by 2023 or 2033 I will be the sort of "cut me and I bleed yellow" activist that form the core of activists for political parties but I am certainly not there yet.

But I have renewed my membership for another year. That gets me another year closer to perhaps eventually being one!

I'll never accept the label tribalist

I've had numerous debates over the last few years with people about the definition of a political tribalist and the fact that I do not think of myself as one of them. I have had counter arguments posed such as the mere fact that I go out knocking on doors and delivering leaflets for a particular political party (in my case the Lib Dems) by definition makes me tribal. I disagree with this quite strongly.

For me, tribalism is the sort of "my party right and wrong" attitude that I see from the more partisan political activists, perhaps epitomised by the sort of person who opposes a policy simply because it is from another party. I had a discussion last year with a Labour activist who claimed that there had never been a Liberal/Lib Dem policy that he had agreed with. Ever. To me that just seems utterly preposterous and completely lacking in credibility, especially given that the overlap between Liberal/Lib Dem and Labour over the years must have meant in the past that plenty of those policies must have essentially also been Labour policies at various points. But that's the sort of thing I am talking about.

I saw another example yesterday in this piece from Luke Akehurst on Labourlist. At one point in the post he writes:

The worst day and the worst decisions of the Blair and Brown years would be better to live through again than the best day of the mob running Britain now.

That to me shows the mindset of a tribalist and one that I just cannot empathise with. Luke is saying that the day that David Kelly committed suicide following being named by a "outing" strategy devised by the Labour Party media machine is a better day to live through than the day David Cameron unequivocally and with widely praised Statesmanship accepted the findings of the Bloody Sunday inquiry in full. He is also saying that the day the records of 25 million people went missing from the Child Benefits system is a better day than when nearly 1 million of the lowest earning workers in the country were taken out of tax altogether.

I could go on. For me, that sort of thinking does not add up. Of course I accept that Luke thinks overall the 13 years of Labour government were better than the last year of the coalition. But to think every single individual day of the years running from 2nd May 1997 through to 11th May 2010 are all better than any of the days since then is what I define as tribalism. It's the sort of thing that in a speech from the podium at Labour conference would get great cheers but that does not stand up to scrutiny.

And I would say this about any government's record against any other. I grew up in a family that had very strong views about Margaret Thatcher and were against much of what she stood for but the day that the Falkland Islands were liberated from Argentine occupation would be high up there in the best days for this country of the last 30 years. And despite the fact that I have spent the last few years campaigning for the Lib Dems and against the Labour Party I would highlight the decisions to give the Bank of England control over interest rates and the introduction of the minimum wage two of the best decisions any government has ever made.

Tribalists exist in all parties. Sometimes they are interesting to listen to even putting aside the somewhat hyperbolic tendencies. Sometimes they bore the pants off me and I stop listening.

But I will never consider myself one of them.