Will things fall apart if the centre cannot hold?

I AM a member of a political party. I have been for some time. I became a member because the party I joined represented my views and I felt I could participate in promoting its aims together with people and organisations who held the same beliefs.

- Fred Hughes - Historian and author

I mention this in the light of the number of party members on both sides of the political spectrum who are defecting, including a rush of left-wing members leaving Labour to join a new party launched by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

Whether you're an active member or a voting supporter, there's no doubt that the way we do politics is changing, especially in what we expect from our political representatives and the parties they stand for. From top down, national and local governance is changing because of societal evolution and cultural shifts in an ever-shrinking world geared to increasingly advanced technology. In plain words, we are a society of today and not yesterday, whether for good or bad. By breaking away party members are telling their politicians that they are not responding accordingly, and the familiar isolation and tiered politics is taking no account of their needs.