Just a few months after becoming a political party, Change UK has announced it is splitting. Six of its MPs, including its leader Heidi Allen, have quit, with Anna Soubry now taking the crown. The party confirmed the split with a press release typical of its odd behaviour throughout its existence, focusing on Soubry’s election before casually mentioning that more than half the party had left.
Allen has left, along with Chuka Umunna, Sarah Wollaston, Gavin Shuker, Luciana Berger and Sarah Wollaston. They are returning to working as an ‘independent grouping’ and leave behind Soubry, Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey. Despite being small, the party had been riven with infighting from the beginning, with unease between members about the branding, the way certain MPs talked to former colleagues, and spending decisions. The disastrous European election results last week led to a series of post-mortem meetings, in which it became clear that the splitters were going to have to split again.
One of the things that the splitters feel slowed down their new party was that there was not, as had been expected, a second wave of Labour MPs joining them. There had been a number who were poised to leave, having been involved in the early discussions about breaking away, but they had either been enticed to stay in their party by Tom Watson, or put off by the oddly tribal behaviour of some of those in Change UK, which claimed to want to change a broken political system.
They also suffered as a result of Luciana Berger being away on maternity leave, as her story of leaving Labour over the horrific anti-Semitism that she had experienced was truly raw and powerful. Without her, the other members struggled to articulate such an urgent case for leaving their old party.
Then there was the fact that the Independent Group was really formed as a refuge for people fleeing their parties, rather than as a place where like-minded people could gather. Some of the MPs from different parties agreed with one another, but others turned out to be so independently-minded that it was a wonder they’d managed to stay in any party for very long. Allen was considered a charismatic leader, but not someone who had much message discipline, even when it came to what she thought herself.
The wider effect of this split will be to make it seem impossible to set up the new centrist party that many people were apparently longing for just months ago. Labour MPs who are profoundly miserable in their party will nevertheless be relieved that they dodged a bullet by not joining this beleaguered group. And the pro-Remain, centrist voice in Parliament is going to be even weaker as it further fragments.
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