One throwaway remark that led to the birth of a new movement
It started with a throwaway remark on the back of a bus on the road to Wembley. Leavers and Remainers were preparing to do battle at the complex’s arena in what would be the last big debate before the Brexit referendum on June 23 2016. Leave’s red bus had already pulled up, with Tory Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom and Labour Leaver Gisela Stuart making their way into the venue as the blue Remain bus pulled up behind.
Emboldened by the heady atmosphere of cross-party consensus, the former Conservative MP for Totnes Sarah Wollaston could not help but blurt it out: “I have got more in common with you lot than I do with Boris Johnson”. She was speaking to an astonished Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan, then Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and Caroline Lucas, head of the Greens.
According to one observer who witnessed the moment: “The seed had been sown.”
The Remain insider added: “There was always going to be some sort of political realignment. But you could tell Brexit had given it rocket boosters.”
Although Wollaston was not one of the main speakers at the event, at which Johnson clashed with his own Conservative colleague Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Tories, before a 6,000-strong crowd, it would later prove to be a key moment in the history of the formation of the Independent Group of rebel Europhile MPS.
So, too, of course, was the referendum result 48 hours later. While Leave campaigners rested on their laurels, congratulating themselves on a job well done, former Labour leadership hopeful Chuka Umunna – who had been front and centre of the Remain campaign – immediately set to work.
Deciding that, far from being over, the Remain campaign was only just beginning, the MP for Streatham knew he had to create a vehicle for the cross-party consensus to continue. Initially, the momentum fell behind Gina Miller’s court case against the Government over its authority to implement Brexit without approval from Parliament.
But there was also a major distraction, with Labour engulfed in its own internal crisis. It is perhaps worth remembering that the no-confidence motion in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, tabled the day after the referendum, was a joint effort by Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey, one of the seven Labour MPS who defected on Monday before being joined by their former colleague Joan Ryan and former Tories Wollaston, Anna Soubry and Heidi Allen.
Despite losing the vote by 172 to 40, Corbyn vowed to stay on – and once he had won a second leadership contest against Owen Smith with a two per cent increase in his vote share, critics like Umunna and his fellow defector Chris Leslie knew it was game over.
As Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’S political editor, put it at the time, the new mandate demonstrated that Corbyn’s detractors had “failed badly in their attempt to oust him”.
With Miller’s legal quest for a meaningful vote won, and Corbyn
buoyed by Labour’s election “victory” following the snap poll on June 8 2017, Umunna realised this was the time to step up the campaign for centralism.
Having worked closely with Soubry during the referendum campaign – and acknowledging the Broxtowe MP as an accomplished media performer – the pair resolved to co-chair an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on European Relations. “Chuka and Anna always got on very well,” said a source who attended the APPG’S Wednesday morning meetings. “They are very close. Whenever you are with them, the personal chemistry between them is very warm.”
Committee Room 17 would invariably play host to the weekly 9am get-togethers, which provided a forum for Remainer MPS from all parties to discuss strategy with pro-eu organisations such as Best for Britain, Open Britain and More United, set up after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.
“The people we serve expect politicians of different parties to work together in the national interest to secure the best possible outcome for our communities,” read the group’s website.
“Chuka set up the structure”, said an insider. “They’d meet at 9am every Wednesday on the committee corridor and then traipse over to the European Commission’s headquarters on Smith Square for another meeting at 11am. It all happened before PMQS. While Brexit was undoubtedly the main focus, it gave cover to discussions about forming a new centrist party. All the usual Remain suspects would go but you’d also have people there like [Labour MPS] David Lammy and Alison Mcgovern. It was a big melting pot of very frustrated people.”
Of course it was not long before Tony Blair began to be linked to the formation of a new progressive party. The former prime minister, who still had huge sway with Labour MPS on the right of the party, was desperate for Brexit to be his political redemption. “Young voters didn’t remember Iraq,” a source said. “What they wanted was a second referendum and action on climate change, and while Tony never thought he could be leader again, he did want to be a part of that movement.”
By April 2018, there were reports that Lovefilm founder Simon Franks was willing to bankroll a breakaway party with £50million in a bid to reciprocate what En Marche! – the movement founded in 2016 by Emmanuel Macron – had achieved across the Channel.
The trouble was, none of the politicians took him very seriously. “It struck them all as a bit amateur hour,” said a source. “The centrists didn’t want to be beholden to any businessmen. There was a sense that if they were to break away, they would have to start from zero on Day One.”
MPS also had their own ideas. Corbyn critic Leslie, said to be the brains behind the Independent Group, having spent months writing strategy papers, would go on to spend five days authoring a 25,000-word pamphlet, The Six Values of Mainstream Britain, with the Social Market Foundation in June 2018.
Not long after, he accompanied Umunna and fellow Labour defector Gavin Shuker and nine other moderate MPS on a weekend at the Fair Oak Farm estate in Kent in what was described as a “secret plot to oust Corbyn”.
The move coincided with the Labour Party becoming engulfed in a scandal after the leadership refused to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism the following month.
Shuker and Ryan had already been targeted by hard-left activists after speaking out about the anti-semitism problem within the party, but it was the threatened deselection of their veteran Labour colleague Dame Louise Ellman last September that proved to be the final straw for the likes of Umunna. “Chuka was furious at how someone as long-standing as Ellman was being treated,” said a source.
It came after his Jewish colleague Luciana Berger – also threatened with deselection – stated she felt “unwelcome” following the re-emergence of a video in which Corbyn said “British Zionists” do not understand “English irony”. Having needed a police escort into the party conference in Liverpool last September, Berger, the former Labour MP, for Liverpool Wavertree, was invited to a make-or-break meeting in Corbyn’s office as recently as last Wednesday, but “it was all too little too late,” according to a source.
The pregnant mother of one was due to go on maternity last week but once the half-term parliamentary recess was cancelled, the defectors realised that – with little else going on in Parliament – Monday would provide the perfect opportunity for the mass resignation.
As a former NUS officer and with close links to Corbyn’s office, it made sense for Berger to act as front woman. Indeed, amid all the talk of Umunna taking control some have already pointed out that it wouldn’t be very “progressive” to deny Berger the leadership opportunity simply because she is about to give birth (cue one of many battles ahead for the group of political misfits).
The original seven each stumped up £2,000 to pay for the hire of the press conference venue at County Hall and the launch of the group’s new website. (Umunna received a £10,000 donation from London wine company Farr Vintners on January 31 – which, along with rumours of cash coming from disgruntled Liberal Democrat donors, will at least give the group something to toast in the immediate term).
The septet sat in a side room and coordinated the sending of their resignation letters via email on their mobile phones before they addressed
‘There was always going to be some sort of political realignment. But you could tell Brexit had given it rocket boosters’
the assembled press. According to one insider, it followed days of tense meetings in Leslie’s Portcullis House office, over cans of Diet Coke, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and ready salted crisps, not to mention hundreds of messages on various What’s App groups. “They’ve got so many I’ve lost count,” said one insider.
Cracks had started to appear on January 21, when a delegation including Soubry, Umunna, Leslie, Berger and Shuker tried to lobby David Lidington, Theresa May’s de facto deputy at Downing Street, to keep a second referendum on the table.
Three days later, Berger, Wollaston and their fellow defector Mike Gapes – along with Tory Remainer Phillip Lee – held a press conference outside Parliament announcing they were dropping plans for a People’s Vote.
Then, on January 29, MPS backed Sir Graham Brady’s amendment calling for the Irish backstop to be replaced with “alternative arrangements”. With other pro-eu amendments having been thwarted, they were fast running out of options.
“Everything ramped up after that January 29 vote,” said a source. “There was no more room for manoeuvre. Chris came up with the name of the group and then Tories like Allen were helping to draft the wording for the website. It was a coordinated effort.”
There were telltale signs on Monday that Soubry was also poised to jump ship when she removed all reference to the Conservative Party from her social media profiles.
The final straw for the former business minister was her Remainer ally and close friend Nicky Morgan conspiring with the Brexiteer European Research Group (ERG) over the so-called Malthouse Compromise.
She could barely contain her rage when her Tory colleague raised the plan during Prime Minister’s Questions last month, shouting: “It would have been nice to have been told about it.” Which in part explains her bitterness towards the influential group of Conservative backbenchers chaired by Jacob Rees-mogg.
Morgan told The Daily Telegraph: “As soon as I heard about the seven Labour MPS going on Monday I knew it was only a matter of time. There was no surprise it was those three. I don’t think any of it has come as much of a surprise to anyone.”