Goodbye to all this - breaking the bonds that tie

Twenty-five years in the Party, pretty much all of them in London, and it is finally time to move on. So, I've resigned my seat on English Council in favour of someone else, and transferred my membership to my new Local Party, Bury St Edmunds, in a new Region, East of England.

Of course, I haven't been active for all of that time. I tend towards bursts of enthusiasm which gradually fade. I have (effectively) retired from political activity twice, and returned on both occasions to loyally serve the Party in a bureaucratic capacity. It's been fun and I've been happy to do what I could to help others get elected - the 'going to meetings so that you don't have to' model.

I've even managed to avoid getting elected, in Southwark by dint of making myself Returning Officer for the selection in a target ward, in Brent by volunteering to chair the Approval Panel (and ultimately by moving house!).

I'll miss London politics - a bit - but, I have to confess, I won't miss London Regional Party politics. There are some really good people, doing really good things, but the sense of a strategic direction has always seemed to be somewhere over the horizon. And, in the end, I like so many of my predecessors, lost the will to fight.

However, London isn't the only thing I'm giving up...