The Independent Group for Change | Have decided to disband after ten months

They're the result of an Apprentice task to create a political party at this point.
 
Ubik said:
They're the result of an Apprentice task to create a political party at this point.
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I feel like as a party they're largely the hubris of a group of politicians who've spent so much time convinced they were the sensible 'moderates' of their respective parties, the only sensible figures left in politics, that they never took any time to actually consider whether they had any ideas or policies, or whether said ideas and policies were worth implementing. Just an utterly pointless vanity project.
 
Cheesy said:
I feel like as a party they're largely the hubris of a group of politicians who've spent so much time convinced they were the sensible 'moderates' of their respective parties, the only sensible figures left in politics, that they never took any time to actually consider whether they had any ideas or policies, or whether said ideas and policies were worth implementing. Just an utterly pointless vanity project.
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It's hard to know how much is them just being rubbish(I image its a far bit) and how much is down centre left/liberal politics being in a complete crisis. Where in western politics are liberals paving the way for the future ?
 
Sweet Square said:
It's hard to know how much is them just being rubbish(I image its a far bit) and how much is down centre left/liberal politics being in a complete crisis. Where in western politics are liberals paving the way for the future ?
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I think it's a mix of both. As you say a lot of the traditional centre-left/centrist parties are largely bereft of ideas right now, but I'd say a lot of them are filled with (somewhat) decent people with reasonable political pedigree who've largely just been passed by.

This lot, on the other hand, are basically the result of some of the most vapid and inane but media-friendly MP's deciding they're suddenly well-placed to be the voices of reason in the country, even though most of them don't have political substantive or consistent and well-developed political philosophies. They're the manifestation of someone you were in school with who thought they were really intelligent because they used big words and liked to think they were more mature than everyone else around them.
 
Change UK leader says the party may no longer exist by the next election



  • Change UK leader Heidi Allen suggests the party may cease to exist in its current form before the next election.
  • The party was formed by former Conservative and Labour MPs earlier this year, but has struggled to gain support.
  • Allen suggests she may instead seek re-election as part of a "brand new world party" encompassing MPs from across the House of Commons.
  • The comments come after a leading candidate for the party described them as a "sinking ship."
    LONDON - Change UK may no longer exist in its current form by the time of the next election, its leader Heidi Allen said on Monday.

    Allen suggested she may not stand for the party, as it could be subsumed into a "brand new world party" before then.

    "Will I stand again in South Cambridgeshire, my constituency, as a Change UK [candidate]?" she told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme.

    "It depends whether we have managed to bring together some of the other MPs from the House of Commons.

    "The format might be slightly different but whatever the brand new world party looks like I'm absolutely not going back to the Conservatives."

    Allen's comments came after Change UK's lead candidate in the South West region for the upcoming European Parliament elections, described the party as a "sinking ship."

    Rachel Johnson told the Times at the weekend that she was "the rat that jumps on the sinking ship," and suggested that the party was haemorrhaging support.

    She described Change UK as "a terrible name," adding that "they want to focus-group everything and they have a leadership team of about 11 people."

    The party, which was formed by former Conservative and Labour MPs earlier this year, has struggled to gain traction.

    Some recent national opinion polls have put them as having as low as 1% support among the public.
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Take it that voters were not ready for change.
 
Given Rachel Johnson's frank review of her own new party at the weekend i think it's safe to say Change UK is done. They've now hit self-awareness that they're useless and no one else is coming.

Will be interesting to watch them try and preserve their own careers.
 
Smores said:
Given Rachel Johnson's frank review of her own new party at the weekend i think it's safe to say Change UK is done. They've now hit self-awareness that they're useless and no one else is coming.

Will be interesting to watch them try and preserve their own careers.
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Suspect a move to the libs is on the cards for most... when does vince cable leave?
 
sun_tzu said:
Suspect a move to the libs is on the cards for most... when does vince cable leave?
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If the Lib Dems have any self-respect they should tell every single one of them to feck off. This was a party whose entire existence was basically based around the belief that the Lib Dems were shit, and that for centrists to win they had to be less hopelessly shit than the Lib Dems. And while I'm no fan of the Lib Dems, for someone who's ideologically a centrist (if you term the Lib Dems as such) then it's fairly arrogant to think you can basically start a new party of your own without any of the existing infrastructure or ideology (tenuous, I know, but still) and wipe out your main ideological competition in an instant. Especially considering this was basically a bunch of unpopular MP's as opposed to a mass movement. The Lib Dems are starting to poll well again - they don't really need any of this mob.
 
Have to say despite my early optimism, they haven’t done anything to convince me to vote for them ahead of Lib Dem’s or Green.
 
Cheesy said:
If the Lib Dems have any self-respect they should tell every single one of them to feck off. This was a party whose entire existence was basically based around the belief that the Lib Dems were shit, and that for centrists to win they had to be less hopelessly shit than the Lib Dems. And while I'm no fan of the Lib Dems, for someone who's ideologically a centrist (if you term the Lib Dems as such) then it's fairly arrogant to think you can basically start a new party of your own without any of the existing infrastructure or ideology (tenuous, I know, but still) and wipe out your main ideological competition in an instant. Especially considering this was basically a bunch of unpopular MP's as opposed to a mass movement. The Lib Dems are starting to poll well again - they don't really need any of this mob.
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Cable did say he had offered to talk on how to target seats to each other's advantage and Change refused. He was extremely annoyed with them.

Whether it was wise to make the offer in the first place is questionable, but there's no love lost now at any rate.
 
711 said:
Cable did say he had offered to talk on how to target seats to each other's advantage and Change refused. He was extremely annoyed with them.

Whether it was wise to make the offer in the first place is questionable, but there's no love lost now at any rate.
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Yeah, I can only assume that was idiotic arrogance from Change UK.
 
Heidi Allen says Change UK could merge with Liberal Democrats

The leader of Change UK, Heidi Allen, has said her party could merge with with the Liberal Democrats, appearing to put her at odds with Chuka Umunna.

On Saturday, Umunna, a Change UK MP and spokesman, said the Independent Group should form a pact not to stand against Lib Dems in the next general election.

But Allen, who left the Conservatives to join two other breakaway Conservative and Labour MPs to form the pro-remain group, said she would go “one step further”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, she said: “I would like us to be in the same vehicle.” Asked if she meant the same party, Allen replied: “Yeah, probably, I don’t know. This partisan thing completely passes me by and when I look across Europe, they seem to do pretty well with coalitions.

“I don’t know what the format will be, but will we be singing from the same hymn sheet? I would hope as a collective, let’s call us a collective, somewhere in the middle with other likeminded colleagues. I don’t think it’s sensible to be too prescriptive at the moment.”

Allen said to be a “real insurgent force”, the alliance needed to be “brand new” rather than a larger Liberal Democrat party.

Last week, she admitted she had threatened to quit in an internal row over tactical voting to maximise the pro-remain challenge to Nigel Farage’s Brexitparty.

But on Sunday she indicated all MPs within the party were moving towards a closer relationship with the Liberal Democrats.

“I think we are sensible enough to know we can’t do it on our own,” she said. “Are we at different stages on the continuum? Of course we are, because everybody’s different. “But do we all agree that the long goal is something centrist together? Then, yes, we are all on that same path.”

Allen said she believed more Tory MPs could desert the party if Boris Johnson became prime minster, while Labour MPs may also defect if Jeremy Corbyn continued to refuse to commit to a second referendum.

Umunna said on Saturday he thought a pact with the Liberal Democrats would be “sensible”, adding: “I personally don’t think we should be competing at a general election.” He cited a pact that the then Liberal party held with the Social Democrats in the 1980s.

On Sunday, ahead of the European election results, Umunna thanked party workers but appeared to accept Change UK was facing humiliation in the polls. “Whatever the results are tonight everyone can be proud,” he said in a video message to the party’s supporters.
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Of course they would . Got to preserve their careers.
 
Soubry now publicly fighting with Allen :lol: I'll be surprised if it lasts the week.
 
Ubik said:
Soubry now publicly fighting with Allen :lol: I'll be surprised if it lasts the week.
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Change UK?

They aren't finished yet.

If a General Election happens tomorrow, they are toast. But if the General Election happens tomorrow, the Tories are screwed too:

https://www.redcafe.net/threads/uk-...onight-from-10pm.447093/page-10#post-24202192

So - the Tories are going to choose a Leave PM to try and take back to support from the Brexit Party. Doing that could (hypothetically) put them 10 points ahead of Labour again.

But - doing so could force 10-50 Tory MPs to look an alternative party to join, depending on what the Leave PM wants to do (options ranging from Hard Brexit to Very Hard Brexit).

And where are those Tory MPs going to go?

Option 1 - Change UK
Option 2 - the Lib Dems
Option 3 - Independent
Option 4- Another new party.
 
rcoobc said:
Change UK?

They aren't finished yet.

If a General Election happens tomorrow, they are toast. But if the General Election happens tomorrow, the Tories are screwed too:

https://www.redcafe.net/threads/uk-...onight-from-10pm.447093/page-10#post-24202192

So - the Tories are going to choose a Leave PM to try and take back to support from the Brexit Party. Doing that could (hypothetically) put them 10 points ahead of Labour again.

But - doing so could force 10-50 Tory MPs to look an alternative party to join, depending on what the Leave PM wants to do (options ranging from Hard Brexit to Very Hard Brexit).

And where are those Tory MPs going to go?

Option 1 - Change UK
Option 2 - the Lib Dems
Option 3 - Independent
Option 4- Another new party.
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Maybe, but the whole premise of them was to fill the gap the Lib Dems had supposedly left, which has vanished as a proposition. Tory wets would be just as well starting off a new party themselves, less incompetently, which Soubry would then no doubt join.
 
Ubik said:
Maybe, but the whole premise of them was to fill the gap the Lib Dems had supposedly left, which has vanished as a proposition. Tory wets would be just as well starting off a new party themselves, less incompetently, which Soubry would then no doubt join.
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True
 
I just thought of a great name change for the Lib Dems.

They can't drop the "Democrats" whilst wanting to reverse Brexit because the press would have a field day.

But they do need a name change following the 2010 fiasco.

So how about.

Remain Liberal Democrats.
 
rcoobc said:
I just thought of a great name change for the Lib Dems.

They can't drop the "Democrats" whilst wanting to reverse Brexit because the press would have a field day.

But they do need a name change following the 2010 fiasco.

So how about.

Remain Liberal Democrats.
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That's terrible :lol:

I was thinking along the same lines the other day though and somehow landed on "Democratic Unionist Party", so you could've done worse.
 
Almost hope they go into a GE just to see them all get embarrassed again. Shocking hubris and probably cost the Lib Dems a bit after naively thinking they could destroy them.
 
Amazing how quickly they descended into irrelevance. Good news for the Lib Dems though, and potentially gives them some strong leadership potential if they fully accept the defectors.
 
Not surprised career politician Chuka may switch to the Lib Dems . Got to preserve his pathetic existence .
 
Drifter said:
Not surprised career politician Chuka may switch to the Lib Dems . Got to preserve his pathetic existence .
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I take great enjoyment in his failure after he's given it out so much. Shame as i feel he could have been a decent politician but his own smugness and inflated self-worth got in the way.
 
Kentonio said:
Amazing how quickly they descended into irrelevance. Good news for the Lib Dems though, and potentially gives them some strong leadership potential if they fully accept the defectors.
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Who exactly would bring them that much needed ‘leadership potential’ from the CHUK circus?
 
Smores said:
I take great enjoyment in his failure after he's given it out so much. Shame as i feel he could have been a decent politician but his own smugness and inflated self-worth got in the way.
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Plus one here...

But I'll disagree about ' decent politician ' because those two words are a complete contradiction.

And while we're talking about Change, I noticed that Angela Smith's husband was listed as a Change UK MEP candidate at the EU elections last week.

A sure sign that Ms Smith is expecting to lose her seat at the next GE seeing as he has been her well paid ' Parliamentary Assistant ' for quite a few years now.

Got to keep that Tax Payers money coming into the Smith Household somehow....
 
Split confirmed. Luciana Berger, Chuka Umunna, Gavin Shuker, Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston and Angela Smith have all split from their split party.

Soubry is the new leader.
 
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