Today, the last day of 2012 a good friend of mine, Emma Daniel (@Huxley06) has confirmed via twitter that she has joined the Labour Party and hopes to stand as a Councillor in Brighton & Hove in the next election. This is excellent news on many levels although not without its sadness. The City certainly needs fresh views and opinions within its political structures. Whenever I speak to people within the city, that is one of the most common subjects of discussion. Emma is without doubt someone who has a great deal to contribute and having worked with her for several years, if she stands in my ward, I will certainly vote for her and would strongly recommend others to do the same, whatever their usual party preferences.

The sadness for me is that in my view what the city also needs are those who are outside the political structures who are willing to speak up on behalf of a range of ideas and principles which cannot be constrained by any of our political parties. In theory there are no reasons why such issues cannot be held in common by some or all parties, and in theory the parties could be flexible enough to allow individuals whose views are wider than the party to accommodate their views. However in practice the tribal responses from the parties mitigate against such an approach. Indeed seeing twitter comments from members of all three parties in the last few hours on the subject of Emma’s decision this tribalism has shown itself yet again.

Twitter has been busy with other things today. Earlier there was a spat between Tracey Hill (@TraceyMHill) and Caroline Penn (@ThePennyDrops) who are both members of the Labour Party and Alexandra Phillips (@Alexforgoldsmid) who is a Green Councillor. The spat seemed to be about decisions taken over the budget for next year and the way in which Alex had voted. I have never met Caroline but I know both Tracey and Alex and frankly both of them are people who have a huge amount to contribute to the city. However their debate seemed to be about “playing the person, not the ball” Such debates are sadly common, but at a time when I believe we need all three parties to work constructively in order to mitigate the worst effects of the financial settlement, this really is a matter of the band playing whilst deck chairs are rearranged by others.

So my wish for the Year ahead is that the inclusion of Emma and others like her in the Political Processes does not strengthen the tribes per se but rather it strengthens the collaborative impact of the parties (including the Lib Dems whose voice is currently missing) and leads to a much more constructive debate which brings the best out of all of those willing to help provide leadership in the Council Chamber.

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As an update to this posting, I continued to follow twitter during the next few days and watched (as I am sure did many others) a spat between Lord Bassam (@StevetheQuip) and Cllr Sven Rufus (@SvenRufus) who is my own Councillor. This was over accusations of poor behaviour by his Lordship. Both men were joined by a few of their tribal colleagues in the argument. The truth will never be known by any of us, and indeed the sense of any benefit from the correspondence is hard to imagine. What it implies is that  the pressing needs of the residents of Hollingdean, or of the work of the House of Lords are not the things which either man is concerned about, at least in public, but they are focused on the deeds and misdeeds of their own party workers. I wonder if all of the political parties need to establish some form of Yammer account where they can attempt to resolve such disagreements in a more discreet manner and not wash so much of their anger in such a public place. I want to see my Cllrs and legislators exercised by the issues that affect our city and nation. A week into the New Year this seems as needed as ever!