While I’m against floor-crossing as a general principle, I’m not sorry to see Patricia De Lille’s ID on the political ER table. The ID are perhaps my least-favourite people in South African politics. From the start, the party was nothing more than a tool for the personal aggrandisement of Patricia De Lille. They have no principles, no plan of action, and no support base. Their idea of fundraising is charging people to invite Patricia De Lille over for dinner. The ID is essentially political vapourware: their only real asset is a talent for getting the media to buy into their self-sustaining hype. Even the IOL article charting the party’s demise claims that the ID “took off like a missile just over two years ago”, which is a strange way of describing a disastrous national election in which the ID managed to win a paltry 1.7%. I won’t miss them when they’re gone.