Change UK
Change UK, founded as The Independent Group and later The Independent Group for Change, was a centrist, pro–European Union political party in the United Kingdom, which existed for ten months during 2019. Established in February and formally recognised as a party in May, it was dissolved in December after all its MPs lost their seats at that year's general election. Its principal aim was a second withdrawal referendum on European Union membership, in which it would campaign to remain in the EU. On economic issues it expressed a commitment to the social market economy.
The party originated when seven MPs resigned from the Labour Party to sit as The Independent Group. They were dissatisfied by Labour's leftward political direction under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, its approach to Brexit and its handling of allegations of antisemitism within the party. They were soon joined by four more MPs, including three from the governing Conservative Party who disliked their party's approach to Brexit and its move rightward. The group registered as a political party under the name Change UK – The Independent Group and appointed former Conservative MP Heidi Allen as their leader before May's European Parliament election.
Following the party's failure to secure any seats in that election, six of its eleven MPs, including Allen, left the party and Anna Soubry took over as leader. Four of the six formed The Independents grouping and two defected to the Liberal Democrats. Later, three of The Independents also joined the Liberal Democrats. In June the party adopted the name The Independent Group for Change following a legal dispute with petition website Change.org. Three of the party's MPs stood for re-election in December's general election. None were re-elected, each losing to a candidate from their former parties. On 19 December, Soubry announced the party's dissolution.
History
Formation
The group was founded by MPs Luciana Berger, Ann Coffey, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith and Chuka Umunna, after they announced their resignations from the opposition Labour Party on 18 February 2019. Rather than forming a party, they referred to themselves as The Independent Group. Leslie, Shuker and Smith had previously lost no-confidence motions brought by their Constituency Labour Parties. Berger had had two brought against her, both withdrawn. Ian Murray planned to resign alongside the others but pulled out shortly before the launch.The media compared TIG to the Gang of Four who split from Labour to found the Social Democratic Party in 1981. Four of the seven founding members had been Labour and Co-operative Party MPs; they left both parties. Announcing the resignations, Berger described Labour as having become "institutionally antisemitic", while Leslie said Labour had been "hijacked by the machine politics of the hard left" and Gapes said he was "furious that the Labour leadership is complicit in facilitating Brexit".
On the day TIG launched, Smith appeared on the BBC's Politics Live programme, where she said, in a discussion about racism, that: "The recent history of the party I've just left suggested it's not just about being black or a funny tin... you know, a different... from the BAME community". The offending phrase was partially uttered, but it was widely reported to be "funny tinge". Smith apologised shortly afterwards, saying, "I'm very upset that I misspoke so badly." Commentators noted an irony, given the fact that the group had been formed in response to perceived racism.
The following day, Joan Ryan, who had the previous September lost a vote of no-confidence brought by her constituency party, announced her departure from Labour, becoming the first MP to join after TIG's formation. The day after that, three MPs left the governing Conservative Party to join. Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen and Anna Soubry cited the handling of Brexit by the Prime Minister ; the party's reliance on the European Research Group and the Democratic Unionist Party in passing Brexit-related legislation; what they saw as the takeover of the party by "right wing,... hard-line anti-EU" MPs and its lack of concern for the "most vulnerable in society", as reasons for their departure.
Umunna rejected the notion of any merger with the Lib Dems. Soubry called on one-nation Conservatives and "like-minded Lib Dems" to join TIG. A few former Conservative and Labour parliamentarians publicly switched allegiance, while some Labour local councillors in England left the party for TIG.
Registration as a political party
In March, the group announced that it had applied to the Electoral Commission to register as a political party under the name "Change UK – The Independent Group", in order to be able to stand candidates if the UK participated in May's European elections. Heidi Allen was appointed interim leader, pending an inaugural party conference planned for September.The registration was confirmed by the Electoral Commission in April. The party's proposed emblem, however, was rejected by the Commission, both for inclusion of the TIG acronym, which they considered insufficiently well-known, and for use of a hashtag.
In April, the centrist Renew Party, which had formed in 2017 but not won any seats, announced it would be supporting Change UK – The Independent Group in the European elections. Change UK welcomed the move and said it would accept applications from Renew-approved candidates to stand for Change UK.
European Parliament election
MEPs Julie Girling and Richard Ashworth joined Change UK in April. Both had been elected as Conservatives, but were suspended from the party after supporting a motion in the European Parliament saying sufficient progress had not been made in Brexit negotiations to allow trade talks to start.In May, Girling decided not to stand and encouraged Remain supporters in the South West to vote for the Lib Dems, saying they were "clearly the lead Remain party" in the region. Both Girling and Change UK later said that she had never been a member or one of their MEPs.
Change UK announced on 23 April that it would stand a full slate of candidates in Great Britain for the European elections, including Ashworth, writer Rachel Johnson, former BBC journalist Gavin Esler, former Conservative MPs Stephen Dorrell and Neil Carmichael, former Labour MEP Carole Tongue, former Labour MPs Roger Casale and Jon Owen Jones, former Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, and Jacek Rostowski, the former deputy Prime Minister of Poland.
Within a day, controversial tweets, some allegedly racist, by two Change UK candidates – including the top one for the Scottish constituency – were discovered, leading those candidates to withdraw. The Muslim Council of Great Britain and anti-racism charity Tell MAMA condemned the selection of a third candidate, Nora Mulready, who they said had conflated Islam with terrorism and legitimised the far right; this was dismissed by Mulready and Change UK as a "smear campaign". Prominent LGBT journalists condemned the selection of Rostowski for his anti-gay marriage stance, although he was believed to have recanted homophobic remarks made in 2011 and 2013 about same-sex relationships.
In mid-May, David MacDonald, who had earlier replaced Joseph Russo as Change UK's lead candidate in Scotland following the controversy over the latter's tweets, defected from the party and encouraged supporters to vote for the Scottish Liberal Democrats. In an interview with The Times, the lead candidate in South West England, Rachel Johnson, described the party as a "sinking ship", criticised the leadership structure and said that Change UK was a "terrible" name.
A week later, interim leader Heidi Allen suggested that the party might not exist at the next general election and hinted at the formation of an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. On 22 May, she said that she and Wollaston had wanted to advise Remain supporters to vote tactically for the Liberal Democrats in the European elections outside of London and South East England, but were overruled by other members. Allen said she threatened to resign as leader over the issue of whether to endorse the Liberal Democrats in some regions. She denied her party was in disarray.
Between the European Parliament polling day and the count, with the Liberal Democrats expected to have done much better in the vote than Change UK, Umunna said that he thought a pact between Change UK and the Liberal Democrats at the next election "would be sensible". Allen then said she would go "one step further" and implied she wanted a merger with the Liberal Democrats. However, Soubry criticised Allen's tactical voting comments and the idea of any imminent alliance with the Liberal Democrats, describing talk of an alliance as being "a long way down the line".
Change UK won no seats in the European elections, garnering 3.3% of the vote overall. Their highest vote was 5.3% in London. They were closest to winning a seat in the South East England constituency where they got 4.2%, 3.1% away from a seat. An internal party report was supposedly critical of some MPs for supposedly talking down the party's prospects.
Resignations
After a June meeting of the party's MPs, described as "amicable" by the Financial Times but "fraught" by the New Statesman, six of the party's MPs – Berger, Shuker, Smith, Umunna, Wollaston and interim party leader Allen – announced their resignation from the party. The other five MPs remained in the party, with Brexit and Justice spokeswoman Anna Soubry becoming leader.In an article shortly before the announcement of the resignations, Stephen Bush of the New Statesman described three viewpoints in the party: one group favouring merger with the Liberal Democrats, including Allen and Umunna; another ideologically unsympathetic towards the Liberal Democrats, including Gapes, Leslie, Ryan and Soubry; and a third who supported reverting to being a loose collection of independents which could attract Labour and Conservative defectors who would find it difficult to switch to a rival party. Shuker was later described as in the last group. The Financial Times described a longstanding split between Umunna and Leslie, both of whom had vied to be the leading force within the party, with Allen chosen as interim leader to defuse tensions.
In an interview that evening, Soubry said that those leaving wanted Change UK to become a "movement" that did not field candidates. The New Statesman commented that most of the MPs with links to donors had left, and the party was not financially secure.
Rumours continued that some, but not all, of those who left the party would eventually join the Liberal Democrats, with the New Statesman suggesting that Umunna, Wollaston and Allen were best placed to be able to win re-election as Liberal Democrats. Umunna joined the Liberal Democrats in June. The following month, Berger, Shuker, Smith and Allen along with John Woodcock formed a non-party group called The Independents. By the time of the election, Berger, Smith and Allen had left this grouping to join the Lib Dems.