Loyalty can be viewed as one of the major contributing elements which hold together friendships, marriages, families, clans, organisations, societies, nations and regions in difficult times. Whilst loyalty can be considered a commitment to a cause or a person or a product line, at the same time its intrinsic value should not be taken for granted.
In today’s world of incessant and clever marketing programmes, via social media platforms and television, shoppers find themselves loyal to particular brands and continuously making repeat purchases of their line of products. Consumers often find that the price of the product(s), unique features which suit their needs, prior good sales experience(s) along with excellent after sales service, or a high opinion of the company (crucial factors in repeat luxury vehicle purchases) make them retain their brand loyalty.
Customers who feel secure and comfortable using the same brand repeatedly, tend to overlook the disadvantages of this loyalty. By focusing on a particular brand of medication it is quite easy to miss the perfectly viable generic formula, which performs the same function at a cheaper price. By remaining loyal to one manufacturer, consumers could miss out on similar products with additional benefits often to their distress. Furthermore, by refusing other options, one faces the risk of going without in the event of the discontinuation of a product line by one’s favourite brand or the difficulty of transitioning to an alternative.
In the instance of politics, loyalty is not such a clear-cut case, as the underlying social factors are of a different hue. Political researchers and social scientists have found that loyalty, an emotional concept, is linked to other sentimentalities such as personal beliefs, ideology and nostalgia.
A comparative study of voting patterns in the 2015 and 2017 UK General Elections conducted by Ipsos MORI, a London, England-based market research firm, provides some understanding on the subject of political loyalty. The study, which dealt primarily with quantitative data, derived insights such as that loyalty is conditional on matching values; otherwise it can be hard to gain. It also noted that allegiance to a political party can be changed depending on the political party’s chance of winning.
There was a stark contrast outlined by this study between the two main political parties, Conservative and Labour, and the others such as UKIP, Green, and Lib Dems. In the 2017 election, both the Conservatives and Labour saw their voter numbers rise by +6 and +10 points respectively, while UKIP especially, suffered a fall of -11 points. One interpretation is that the loyalty that voters feel is dependent on their political party’s ability to win and use its power in parliament to enforce the values within its policies, hence the switch to the bigger contenders.
The results of this study showed that the Conser-vatives and Labour held nine-tenths of the voters in the 2015 election and had a clear demographic of voters that was divided by age, education, and class. Typically, middle class voters with a graduate degree appeared to be loyal to Labour as was suggested by their 15-point lead in this category, while working-class voters with no degree-level qualifications were loyal to the Conservatives as supported by their 17-point lead over the other political parties. Although these demographics were broadly sweeping, they illustrate the general trend of views among voters that the values of a political party influenced their loyalty.
Here, political loyalty cannot be so easily stratified, since voting in general elections is not based on policies or values, but largely along the lines of ethnicity. This form of allegiance, or rather blind loyalty, is a recipe for total disaster. Even more worrisome is the fact that the powers within the ruling party have demanded this loyalty from the inner circle.
As the American author Greg Williams cautions, “People demanding 100 percent loyalty want to blind you. Never be blinded by someone’s light, less you taunt darkness.” Williams further observes, “But, when those in power demand blind loyalty, people with power can stray from a righteous path. And problems can exist in any environment when there’s too much blind obedience. When that occurs, as someone in a position of authority or one challenged by those insisting that you have blind obedience to them, you must be prepared to combat unchecked loyalty… Thus, always be aware of the mindset of those that demand complete loyalty. In so doing, they seek to consume concentrated power within a small container – themselves. And when it comes to absolute power, absolute power rules without leaving a void for dissension.”
In recent times we have witnessed the chaos that follows when the misguided allow the veil of blind loyalty to lead them down a path of no return. A glance over our shoulder no further than our western neighbour Venezuela confirms this point. Its plummeting economy is in no mean part due to the ‘Chavistas’ continued blind loyalty to a party unequipped to manage the complex affairs of the country. Further afield, the events at the Capitol in Washington DC on 6th January, 2021, ignited by a desperate Donald Trump, is a perfect example of the mayhem and bedlam that blind loyalty can spew. Whilst many of those involved in the Capitol riot face charges and jail time, former President Trump sits at his Mar-a-Lago resort accumulating funds for his war chest, (US$120 million to date – New York Times, 17th April) and commandeering the blind loyalty of supposedly intelligent politicians who, in wishing to further their careers, acquiesce to regurgitating his lie that the 2020 US presidential elections were rigged.
Do we continue to meander down this path of blind party loyalty, or will we start putting the nation’s interests first?
