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 (TIG). 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 Berger had had two brought against her, both withdrawn.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 (today the centrist
Liberal Democrats) in 1981. Four of the seven founding members (Berger, Gapes, Shuker and Leslie) 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". 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 (including "red lines" which alienated most Remainers); the party's reliance on the
European Research Group (which supported a
no-deal Brexit) and the
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) 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.
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 (sister of Conservative MPs
Jo and
Boris 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.
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. The
New Statesman commented that most of the MPs with links to donors had left, and the party was not financially secure. 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.
Naming dispute with Change.org and name change At the time of the party's registration, the petitions website
Change.org announced that it would challenge the branding as having "hijacked" its identity. Shortly after announcing themselves as Change UK, Soubry accidentally called the party "Change.org" in Parliament. Threats of litigation resulted in the party applying to the Electoral Commission to change its name to The Independent Group for Change, a request granted the next month.
2019 general election and deregistration Before
the general election in December, the party announced it would only contest
Broxtowe,
Ilford South and
Nottingham East, where Soubry, Gapes and Leslie, respectively, sought re-election. Coffey and Ryan
did not stand for re-election. The Liberal Democrats announced that they would not stand against Soubry in Broxtowe. All three candidates lost their seats: Soubry and Gapes came third in their races, while Leslie was fourth. Soubry had the highest vote share at 8.5%. Of its six former members, Allen did not stand in the election, Shuker stood as an independent candidate and the other four stood for the Liberal Democrats. All of those lost their seats as well, with Berger performing best, coming second with 31.9%, standing in a different constituency,
Finchley and Golders Green. Soubry announced a week after the election that the management council had agreed to deregister with the Electoral Commission and begin the process of closing down the Independent Group for Change. The party tweeted: "It was right to shine a spotlight on Britain's broken politics. But having taken stock and with no voice now in parliament, we begin the process of winding up our party. Thanks to all who stood with us." The party was formally deregistered by the
Electoral Commission on 23 July 2020. ==Reactions==