Winston Churchill, who left the Tories to become a Liberal and then went back to the Conservatives, wryly congratulated himself: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.”
He is the exception to the rule that switchers don’t succeed in British politics. It is an enormous decision when an MP chooses to break with a party to which the politician will very often have committed decades of his or her life. It means the ruination of friendships and the wrecking of family relationships. And it is much more often than not a choice that leads to doom. This is why so many Labour and Conservative MPs stay within their parties even when they are in the most profound despair with where they are going or how they are being led. They resign themselves to bitter self-imprisonment in the belief that splitters never prosper.
There are many things that can be said about the dozen MPs – three from the blue clan, nine from the red – who have broken with their tribes in the past few days. The one thing that this dozen cannot be called is “careerists”. They all know what has happened to defectors in the past and they understand that, unless you are Churchill, the history is littered with failure.
The last major rupture was when the SDP broke away from Labour in the early 1980s. The Gang of Four had great influence on the course of British politics, not least by galvanising the push within Labour to get their former party back towards a position where it could win elections again. They made a big difference, but the fate of the SDP itself disappointed the ambitions of its founders. What began with a poll rating peaking at above 50% and a spectacular run of successes in byelections ended with most of the party agreeing to a rancorous merger with the Liberals and a continuity SDP that limped on for a while under David Owen. This threw in the towel when it endured the ultimate humiliation of receiving fewer votes than the Monster Raving Loony party at the Bootle byelection.
Will that be the miserable fate of the latest attempt to break the mould of British politics? At this early stage, none of the freshly minted Independent Group of MPs can know their ultimate destiny. They could be the start of something significant, the catalyst for a fundamental realignment of our sickly politics. They could be the trigger for changes that return some sanity to the parties they have departed. They are all conscious they could also be crushed in the jaws of an electoral system that protects the old red-blue duopoly by making it very hard to attempt anything fresh.
The first few days have been promising for the breakaways. They launched in a slightly chaotic fashion, but they did not belly flop. They made a splash. They are not yet a party, they have no leader and no agreed policy other than opposition to Brexit, but one poll has given the group a rating in the teens. You wouldn’t want to hang too much hope on that, but it is better than not registering with the public at all.
“The Independent Group” is a clunking title and yet not a stupid one when your intent is to convey the idea that there are more attractive ways to do politics than the poisonous sectarianism that now grips the parties they have quit. As I’ve remarked to you before, there is a thirst among a significant section of the electorate for a viable alternative to the broken big two. The mirroring complaint of both the refugees from Labour and the Tory exiles is that their former tribes have been hijacked by the extremes. This will resonate with those voters who don’t want to be forced to choose between Corbynised Labour and a Rees-Moggifying Conservative party.
A lot of this is about Brexit, which has put the big two under party-splitting stresses, but it goes wider than that. It is also about how this country conducts itself. Our politics has become very ugly as different varieties of populism on left and right have attempted to drive out reason, nuance and a capacity to manage differences of opinion in a civilised way. Within both the red and blue tribes, deviations from the decreed line are denounced as treacheries and purges are threatened against anyone who has the temerity to disagree with the glorious leader or to dispute the wisdom of the Twitter mob. Heidi Allen, one of the trio of ex-Tory MPs, spoke of feeling “liberated” after leaving a party that she could no longer defend. One of those who quit Labour told me of his “huge sense of relief that I can say what I like now. It’s wonderful.”
What a terrible commentary on both the Labour and Tory parties that these MPs speak like people who have escaped from an abusive relationship. Many who remain within those parties know it. I have had both Labour and Tory MPs tell me that they don’t disagree with a word that the defectors have said.
In the early days, it has been inevitable that attention has focused on why these MPs have broken with their former allegiances, not least because of the intensity with which they have condemned the parties they have quit. One of the next challenges will be conveying their positive values. They don’t need a fully fledged, ready-to-serve menu of policies at this stage; there will be merit in being open to good ideas wherever they come from. They will need to communicate their fundamental principles. My hunch is that an inclusive approach will look attractive to voters repulsed by how the old two have been captured by narrow sects.
The breakaways don’t need a leader. At some point, they will have to decide on one, but not yet. A flat hierarchy has its attractions as does being a group which comes from a diverse range of backgrounds and generations. They do not want to look like any one person’s vanity project. Both the Tory and Labour parties have been in the grip of personality cults and it has not done them any favours. There was the cult of “the new Maggie” around Theresa May during the now largely forgotten period when she appeared to be popular. This led her to lock the cabinet in a cupboard during the 2017 election and solo front a campaign that was a disaster for her party. The now-deflating cult around Jeremy Corbyn has left his party in the charge of a man with the most negative ratings for a Labour leader in more than 30 years. There are advantages for the independents in being a group that doesn’t stake all its fortunes in one person and that looks collaborative and tolerant of difference. This will also enhance their chances of attracting further defectors from the big two.
The fate of the breakaways will not be entirely – not even mainly – in their own hands. The traction they achieve with the voters and whether more MPs join them will depend greatly on the behaviour of the parties they have departed. Will the Tories and Labour examine what is it about them that so disgusted these MPs that they felt they had no choice but to leave? Or will the ugly sisters decide that the answer is to carry on as they are, only more so?
Here, there has been a contrast. The reaction from the Conservatives has been generally regretful rather than vengeful. Mrs May is suddenly spending less time on speed dial to the Brextremists and having some conversations with the moderate wing of her party for fear that more of them will break off. The Corbynite zealots seem unsure whether to celebrate the departure of MPs who were always out of sympathy with the glorious leader or to rage against them. Traitors and Tory stooges have been among the insults hurled at the backs of Labour’s departing MPs. Throwing abusive phrases from the little red book of venom may go down well with the Corbynite core. I am not convinced it will sound attractive to less partisan audiences. This vituperation supplies validation of the defectors’ complaint that Labour has been taken over by intolerant fanatics. Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, understands this. He spoke of his “deep sadness”, locating the blame for the split not in the splitters, but in the behaviour of a Labour party that “I no longer recognise”. For observers of the machinations of Corbynology, the most interesting actor has been John McDonnell. He has taken an emollient line, sounding more Watsonite than Corbynite. Being the smartest person in Labour’s high command, the shadow chancellor is the most alive to the damage that could be done to the party’s electoral fortunes by a swelling number of desertions.
For the breakaways pose a challenge to those Labour and Tory MPs who remain trapped within parties that they can no longer stand and who are agonising about whether to stay or to go. They can tell themselves that splitters never prosper, but they can also feel the powerful sense of liberation radiated by those who have chosen to snap their chains and try something new.
• Andrew Rawnsley is an Observer columnist
