In many ways, particularly in terms of class, I'm more of a natural Liberal Democrat voter, but they've alienated me through their current insipid leadership and the manner of the ouster of the last leader, their lack of coherent national policies and the signs that their more libertarian wing is defeating their social democratic wing in the party hierarchy.

Besides, the Lib Dems are just not going to be the party of government any time soon. Add that to the fact that Blair was about to leave office, creating a race for a new leadership team, and joining the Labour Party seemed like a way to make my voice heard. More particularly, I was worried that John Reid might run for Party Leader, and was determined that I would do whatever I could to stop that happening (I was lucky - he elected not to run and actually announced his resignation from the Cabinet).

That's not a very auspicious start to party membership, but over the past few months I've begun to feel a little bit less cynical about the whole exercise, even though only Gordon Brown picked up sufficient nominations to actually be on the ballot for Party Leader. Partly the Deputy Leadership race, and particularly the candidate I supported, Jon Cruddas, helped to build a little faith in me that the party was more than an unresponsive top-down behemoth. Partly my recent hesitant involvement with various enthusiastic but rather ineffective hard left student political groups reminded me once again of the values of pragmatism and working within the system rather than against the system as a whole. Partly my reading of the American blogosphere showed that political activism did hold the potential for achieving something. And to be brutally honest, partly it was the realisation that I'm a politics junkie and would one day like to be involved in that sphere professionally in some form or another.

So on Friday, two days after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, I turned up at Cambridge Labour Party's offices to help out with envelope-stuffing.

I can't say my first impressions were that great. There was one guy there clearing up in the hall, but the person in charge of envelope-stuffing was out of the office at the time and no other volunteers were present at the time, so I spent about ten minutes milling around aimlessly. In the defence of the branch, I didn't turn up until about half three in the afternoon for one reason and another and there had been volunteers there earlier in the day, and the guy clearing up (a local councillor, I was to learn,) offered me a cup of tea and engaged me in a bit of conversation before the woman responsible for organising the volunteers returned and I was given something useful to do - sticking addresses onto envelope.

I spent a little over an hour sticking addresses onto envelopes, and it was every bit as dull as it sounds, but there was a certain satisfaction in at least doing something concrete and I was invited to return for the branch meeting later that night.

So at 8PM I and around 20 others were back in the hall for a meeting of the Constituency Labour Party. At twenty years old I was probably the youngest one there by about five years, although most of my fellow students had already returned home by that night, so it may not have been representative. Most of those present were in later middle age and many of them were local councillors or officials in the Constituency Labour Party. Also present was the Labour candidate for Cambridge at the next election, Daniel Zeichner (we don't have primaries in Britain, nor fixed election cycles, so candidates are chosen in advance by constituency parties and Cambridge picked particularly early) and a couple of officials from regional offices.

The meeting consisted of three presentations, with a period of friendly comments and debate after each one. The party membership seemed to be active, willing to disagree with one another but prepared to put aside their differences once each point was resolved. There was a certain degree of joking camaraderie amongst them.

The meeting kicked off with one of them giving a presentation on strategy for the next election, mentioning that the constituency (which passed from Labour to Lib Dem at the 2005 election) was a target for the next election, which he suggested might be as early as spring 2008. I can't say I was massively impressed by his performance, as whilst much of what he said was sensible, and his warning that there was no "Army of volunteers" waiting in the wings to be Labour's activists in Cambridge was a very necessary warning, he appeared to be taking a somewhat simplistic view of the political climate.

He argued that single issues such as Iraq and top-up fees would be less important when next we go to the ballot box, and largely dodged my question on potential future single issues, such as (God forbid) Iran or increased top-up fees. He suggested swing voters should be courted but didn't concentrate much on disaffected Labour supporters aside from a mention that leaflets had been sent out to them once Blair had stepped down, asking them to return to the party.

Somewhat disquietingly, he suggested that campaigning should be almost entirely negative, pointing out to voters that not electing Labour would risk a Tory government, rather than that the campaign should dwell on the achievements of Labour government. Most worryingly for me, in response to a question about who the core Labour voter was nowadays, he appeared to perceive it as solely a matter of voting habits, not of political beliefs.

I'm going to skip over the second presentation entirely, as it was generally fairly esoteric and my recollections probably aren't helped by my having spent the time between volunteering and the meeting in the pub, and go straight on to the third presentation, by the candidate, Daniel Zeichner. It wasn't big on specifics, but I can tell you it went down well. It played well to the audience of activists, warning us that having been selected candidate, he was no longer specifically trying to win our vote, he was looking for the votes of consituents at large and that our help was needed for that. He then proceeded to pass out a sheet listing roles that needed filling in his campaign and to solicit applications to them.

Given that previous mentions of new media and the like in the meeting had been met with open minds but a large dollop of incomprehension (the first speaker mentioned that he'd been told the party should look at using RSS feeds, before revealing that he had no idea what they were and asking if any of those present could tell him - only I could), I went home and prepared an application to run the online side of his campaign. I don't know that I'd get such a post (I'm probably just barely qualified for it, but I certainly hope there's somebody else more computer literate than me who's applied) but I certainly know that I intend to help out with the campaign in some form, even if it's no more glorious than leafletting.

For all that I'm still cynical about the national party (if anybody wants my thoughts about the Cabinet reshuffle, I can bore you at length in the comments) I've acquired a certain faith in the local party members.