Change party? You might think I murdered somebody.
Ambition is good >
So I changed parties on Sunday. Big deal you might think. Well yeah, apparently.
Who am I you might be asking yourself? Well listen, if you had hundreds of people over the last week asking you who you were, you might start to wonder who you were yourself!
Thankfully I know who I am.
Politically speaking, I'm a nobody. I've never held public office. Never been a candidate in a parliamentary election. Never been a special adviser. Never been a councillor.
You can sum my 'political footprint' up as follows: I once ran digital communications and devised digital strategy for the Labour Party, including some very high profile online communications with the then Prime Minister Tony Blair. After that I made a name for myself writing in a variety of outlets about digital politics, as well as advising a range of politicians around the world on digital campaign strategy. I branched out and also wrote quite a few things, on foreign affairs and enterprise mainly. I co-authored the Labour's Business pamphlet late last year.
So not really that important at all, not even in the insular, sycophantic, kleptocratic world of Westminster. Therefore the reaction to me choosing to switch to a different party came as a bit of a shock.
Thousands of tweets, more than 10,000 unique visits in two days on my blog, hundreds of emails and direct messages. A number of newspapers ran the story and several bloggers wrote about it too.
On a personal level, there were a number of rather vicious text messages from 'upstanding' members of the Labour Party. I'll save them for a future post, they shine quite a light on the psyche of the London Labour circuit.
Also of note, to me at least, were the efforts former colleagues have gone to to pretend that I didn't exist previously.
I received a substantial number of messages, from friends and strangers, praising my decision (if not necessarily agreeing with it) and offering moral support. There were a number of very touching public messages of support, not least Dan Hodges' and Peter Watt's posts.
I really found out who my friends were over the last week.
But back to the main point. Why is it so dramatic that a blogger like me would choose to switch sides? It shows how tribal and petty British party politics can be. In other countries, parties come and go, new parties are formed, people move parties. But not in Britain, oh no!
If you choose to dare 'defect' to the other side (what's with the Cold War language anyway?), you are going to feel the wrath of your former party. People will pretend to never have met you. 'Friends' will send you vicious diatribes. Thousands of strangers will take it upon themselves to pass moral judgement on you. You will become a pariah.
It's almost like I'd murdered somebody or set out on a national campaign to steal sweets from children.
Anyway. I'm still here. I may be a member of the Conservative party but my values and views on the role of the state have not changed. I am a centrist who believes that this country needs deep, wide reform to be successful in the 21st century.
This week has shown me how vile and disgusting the British political class can be. It's also shown me that the Tories have a far less petty, tribal nature to their outlook. I've been made to feel welcome. People are interested in what I have to say going forward. The vitriol, the threats of violence, the moral indignation have all shown me that my decision to leave the old bitter left was the right decision.
People should feel free to switch parties when their current party moves away from what attracted them in the first place. People should not inherit party membership from their parents and remain therein for the rest of their lives. People need to use their brains and make conscientious decisions on which party they choose to join instead of succumbing to weak-minded groupthink.
If more people feel that switching parties is an option, perhaps our politics will become just a little bit less tribal, a little less petty, and we can get on with making this country a better place.
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