How to leave the Labour party

No longer willing to live and die beneath the red flag? How to escape.

(Photo By Labour have sent me 393 emails since the leadership elections started. The party needs to stop acting like a machine and start engaging people properly. Photo: Oli Scarff/ Staff/ Getty Images)

Perhaps you aren’t exactly happy about the leader of the party. Perhaps you voted for Brexit and are finding your inner Kipper. Or perhaps you’d just rather spend those subs on beer.

So you go to the Labour party website, and funnily enough, despite this being a very popular Google search term, there is no section on how to leave. Once you have joined, it seems, you are Labour for life. There are whole forums on the internet dedicated to working out a way to quit.

This is how you can leave the Labour party.

There are two ways.

1. You can write abusive things on social media, join the Conservative Party and tweet enthusiastically about it or go campaigning for The Greens and tweet about it too. The nuclear option is of course going for another left-wing party like the Socialists Workers Party or the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

2. You can cancel your direct debit, and contact the Labour party headquarters telling them you are leaving at The Labour Party, Labour Central, Kings Manor, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 6PA. This is more boring, but more predictable, and it means you can join again when you are filled with regret for abandoning your comrades.

But be warned, leaving Labour is a bit like leaving the Catholic Church – you can never completely succeed. During the leadership contest, there were reports of lists of ex-Labour members still held by local activists, in the hope that one day, one day, they might come back.

Also, if you join a union, you’re probably affiliated anyway.