With Heidi Allen as leader, TIG confirms its anti-system politics

Independent MP Heidi Allen joins demonstrators pulling suitcases to symbolise the women who travel from Northern Ireland to Great Britain for a termination, as they take part in a protest calling for change to Northern Ireland's abortion laws, during a protest in central London on February 26, 2019. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP) (Photo credit should read NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images)

TIG is dead. Long live CUK! The Independent Group has registered as a political party, “Change UK – The Independent Group”, in anticipation of the European Parliament elections next month. Heidi Allen, the former Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, has been named as its interim leader until a full election at the party’s inaugural conference in September.

Both the choice of name and leader – Allen was the unanimous choice of the party’s 11 MPs – reflect what TIG sees as its political raison d’etre: to act not as an adjunct to any of the existing parties but as a disruptive anti-system entity. Or, as Anna Soubry put it in the Commons this morning, “a new way of doing politics”.