Are the seven replacing Labour or forging a new party?

‘The breakaway MPS are defined as much by what they are escaping as what they are embracing’

Seven down, more to come? That’s the question at Westminster after seven Labour MPS quit the party to set up shop as the Independent Group, essentially the party political equivalent of when a new shopping centre comes into town and slaps “coming soon” billboards all over the awnings. The seven – Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Angela Smith, Ann Coffey, Mike Gapes, and Gavin Shuker – aren’t simply leaving to make a point. They hope to offer a fully fledged political alternative to a Labour leader they regard as a danger to the country and a Conservative Party they see as being devoid of both compassion and competence.

It’s all incredibly similar to the Gang of Four – the four Labour former Cabinet ministers who split away in 1981 to form the Social Democratic Party, and who likewise hoped to “break the mould” of British politics.

They enjoyed remarkable success at by-elections and came within a hair of overtaking Labour in the popular vote: but thanks to the first past the post system they secured only a handful of seats and collapsed into acrimonious in-fighting before merging with the Liberal party to become the Liberal Democrats.

The Gang of Seven don’t like the comparison, not least because of how that story ended. It’s fair to say, as many in the seven do, that 2019 is not 1981 and that the prospects for a new political party are completely different as a result. One of the ironies of Brexit is that despite voting to leave the European project we continue to vote in a traditionally European manner: a party of the traditional Right backed up by nativist populism, whether through coalition or borrowing its clothes, governing as the largest party but without a majority. The traditional Left subsumed or eclipsed by the populist Left. The one thing missing from British politics is a party of the political centre, pulling in a quarter of the vote or thereabouts.

Then, as now, the breakaway MPS are defined as much by what they are escaping as what they are embracing. As one of the MPS reflected: “I have been getting out of bed every morning for the past two years thinking ‘shall I resign from the Labour Party today or tomorrow?’ and it has always been tomorrow. But today it was today.”

There are plenty of Labour MPS who similarly wake up every morning and ask themselves the same question. One Labour MP jokingly likened it to joining Isil: “You have at-risk indices.” In this case, the risks are that a Labour MP faces being deselected by the constituency Labour party if opposing the Labour line on Brexit; disagreeing with Jeremy Corbyn on economic policy; or being horrified by his positions on foreign policy.

Most of the seven tick all of the above boxes – and that’s why they have walked out. Most Labour MPS meet at least one of those risk indices, but on their own that isn’t enough to push MPS out the door: at least not yet.

The trouble is that once MPS are out the door, what they might bring to a new group in terms of size, they could deny it in terms of coherence of strategic direction, and that problem gets more acute if they succeed in recruiting MPS from outside Labour. Does the Independent Group’s best hope lie in being the Labour Party, minus its toleration of anti-semitism? Or a British version of En Marche!, targeting Tory and Liberal Democrat voters just as much as it hammers Labour?

That’s the key strategic choice that yesterday’s launch left unopened, just as the SDP never fully clarified whether its intention was to replace Labour or to forge a new party. Settling the same question will determine if the Independent Group can make a go of life outside of Labour.