A diary from the wilderness: the search for a new political home
Soundings - Print ISSN 1362-6620 - Online ISSN 1741-0797
Volume 2025 Number 90 & 91
A diary from the wilderness: the search for a new political home
Nick Davidson pages 63‑75
DOI: 10.3898/SOUN:90-91.04.2025
Abstract
Nick Davidson is a former Labour Party member in Jeremy Corbyn’s North Islington constituency. His diary begins in May 2024, noting frustration among Corbyn’s constituents, who seem to have no say in his future or in his replacement. There is a sense that local activists are taken for granted by both the national Labour Party and Corbyn himself. In the end Davidson resigns from the party and starts to look for a new political home, though he is not sure if Corbyn’s ‘People’s Forums’ in the constituency are the answer. The diary documents dissatisfaction with the Labour government’s action in office alongside emerging attempts to build alternatives on the left. ‘I understand the urge to build a new home, a place we can call our own, even as I can’t get over the conviction that in the long term Labour is still the only route to power.’ ‘I’m fighting a rear-guard action against slipping from a politics of hope to a politics of despair. How to navigate that?’ Davidson wavers over the Greens - ‘still unsure what the Corbyn offering might amount to while I also can’t quite believe I’m witnessing the birth of a socialist Green Party’. At a disjointed meeting of the Islington North politically ‘homeless’, Corbyn chooses not to mention the New Party’s chaotic membership fiasco: ‘Sixteen months after leaving the party I’m still trying to work out how to navigate this new terrain.’
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To cite this article
Nick Davidson (2025) A diary from the wilderness: the search for a new political home, Soundings, 2025(90 & 91 ), 63-75 . https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN:90-91.04.2025