I lost count of the number of stalls and causes outside the guildhall on Saturday (09 Aug) and it seems that local activists want to move faster than what’s happening nationally
…so states the latest update on the FB page of the Your Party Cambridge Branch (See their website here). I wrote about some of the background early last week here, one that also included the resignation from Cambridge Labour of longtime councillor Dave Baigent (See his statement here). Cllr Baigent has always been on the Environmentalist-Left of the Labour movement so it will be interesting to see what influence he has on any local policies the new grouping comes up with given that at the time of blogging he is the most senior local politician to sign up.
Not everyone is convinced. The Pecksniff column of East Anglia Bylines was particularly scathing.
“So far, its putative members will include disgruntled present Labour members, looking to jump ship; former acolytes of Jeremy Corbyn, who have never forgiven Labour for its treachery; Trotskyists as usual looking to leech onto any political body and bleed it dry; wide-eyed Greens, and no doubt a few Reformers who stumble in by accident while looking for the gents.”
Above – Pecksniff’s diary 09 Aug 2025 in East Anglia Bylines
There is an interesting thread on BSkye by Dylan Difford, a data journalist at YouGov who has crunched some numbers about the switching of political preferences since the 2024 General Election. It’s too early to tell how this will change with the emergence of a Corbyn/Sultana party – again mindful that they also have the Independent Alliance group of MPs (an additional four MPs) who won in safe Labour seats on issues such as Gaza as well as constituency-specific issues.
I’m too old and fatigued to be having strong opinions on what people should/shouldn’t do
As I mentioned in my earlier piece, do a bit of background reading on who is getting involved, who stands for what, and the past histories of groups and organisations involved. And if you’re curious enough, go along and judge for yourselves. Also, I don’t want to be Russell Howard’s stereotype of The Guardian or The Independent impersonated in his newspapers sketch from the late 2000s.
‘How do you recruit and sustain a diverse group of activists in a political movement?”
The inevitable challenge nearly all of Cambridge’s campaigning and political movements/groups have in their activist base is a lack of diversity compared with the general population of our city.
Above – Cambridge CND outside The Guildhall commemorating the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945
And a fair amount of that is down to structural problems such as the housing crisis making it harder for younger generations to afford their own places to live. If young adults can’t afford to socialise (look at how our city’s nightlife is struggling, reflected by the closure of night clubs, the decline of club nights, and the pitching of what’s left towards the over-30s) then what hope is there for any of them finding the time and money to get involved in campaigning? (Especially if they are living in short-term rental accommodation that prevents them from putting any roots down). Combine that with the inevitably high annual turnover – not just from the undergraduates but also from the researchers coming to the end of their fixed term contracts, and you can see why the contractual structures of our economy is now a social problem for our city and county.
Social media and political campaigning
While the number of people who have become ‘Friends’ of the branch’s FB page here has risen sharply to 344, it remains to be seen what the conversion rate is – alongside the number of people not on that (or any other SocMed) platform who later join formally as members. What that entails will ultimately be decided nationally. With the implosion of the big SocMed platforms, it’ll be interesting to compare what happens in the near future here with the huge Extinction Rebellion Cambridge movement that emerged in the late 2010s. Although as we’ve seen today, the legislation passed by Parliament under the previous and current governments has given police much stronger powers to clamp down on political dissent – something that is now the subject of a High Court case. In the meantime the backlog of court cases in the criminal justice system just got longer. That in itself will be causing political headaches at the Ministry of Justice who will have to find the funding to manage the fallout from a decision that ultimately came from the Home Office. And as the former Justice Secretary David Lidington said in this BSky post, before the creation of the Ministry of Justice, any toughening of sentences that led to increased prison costs all came out of the Home Office’s budget. (Hence the hesitation from Home Secretaries about lengthening sentences without additional financial support from The Chancellor). Expect questions in Parliament when it returns in 3-4 weeks time.
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on BSky <- A critical mass of public policy people seem to have moved here (and we could do with more local Cambridge/Cambs people on there!)
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
The Cambridge Town Owl 