What does loyalty mean to you in 2024? Perhaps the same as it ever did – allegiance to your family, friends and almost certainly to people, organisations and businesses who at some stage have looked out for you, inspiring gratitude and devotion.
But what about loyalty to your beliefs? Those things you can’t physically touch but are part of that voice in your head.
I’m sure you’ve heard the quote from Groucho Marx, who said: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.”
It came into my mind when I was considering the aftermath of the general election. It’s become clear that millions of people across the country are clearly now very willing to vote for a different party at each election.
In 1951, Labour and the Conservatives took 97 per cent of all the votes cast between them. In 2024 they shared just about 60 per cent. The old tribal loyalties seem to be as much a part of the past as milk floats, landlines or black and white television.
I can remember as a kid hearing grown-ups say things like, “I’ll always be Conservative – blue right through”, and “I’ve always voted Labour and I always will”. Once you’d decided your politics, that was it, you couldn’t or wouldn’t ever change. And in many cases it was a hereditary thing: “I vote Liberal Democrat because my mum and dad did, and their parents before them.”
It’s a bit like the kind of chants you still hear at football matches: “We’ll support you evermore”. In fact, football is a good comparison – almost the worst thing any fan can do is change club. You won’t find a supporter at the bar boasting to her/his mates, “Well, I used to support Newcastle but now I’m Sunderland through and through”.
However, even those loyalties are tested. Think of what can happen when a player – once revered and adored from the stands – decides to leave and, heavens above, join a rival club. Their perceived lack of loyalty is seen as heinous, unforgiveable.
Some of our allegiances are forged by what we stand against, not just what we stand for. Take the case of football fans who are happy to lend their support to a team that they have no time for as long as they beat the team they dislike the most.
I’d be surprised if there was a single candidate who stood at the election who didn’t tell people how much they loved their country. It’s treated as a given. Surely we’re on safe ground here: we can get teary when we hear our national anthem, emotional when we see our flag being raised, defensive if our homeland is being traduced.
But again, that loyalty is complicated.
How do you describe yourself when asked? Welsh or British? And if you said Welsh would you specify North or South? Are you American or a New Yorker? English or, like me, a Lancastrian?
Why should voting be any different from any other aspect of life? There is a whole industry built around ensuring you always shop at the same supermarket – loyalty cards, incentive schemes, benefits, offers, etc. But if you’re on your way home from work and need some milk and the nearest supermarket isn’t one that you’ve got the app for, are you seriously going to, as Dionne Warwick would say, “walk on by”?
We all do a lot of scrolling on our phones. Within a second you’ve decided whether to stay on that page, read that message or move on. You see a video you might click on, you might give it three seconds and if it hasn’t made you laugh, you scroll again. I suppose it is a digital version of the “speak as you find” principle – I’ll stay with this until I decide I’m going to look elsewhere.
So maybe some people are looking at their political choices in the same way – I’ll try this for a bit but if I don’t like it, I’m going somewhere else.
And if people across the country are now deciding that they’ll vote according to their specific situation and circumstances, not simply because that’s how they’ve always done it, or how their parents did it, then it means in theory that all our votes are up for grabs. The politicians cannot take for granted a region, a constituency or a group of people.
Victoria Derbyshire is a journalist, broadcaster and host of BBC Newsnight and Ukrainecast