16 April 2019updated 07 Jun 2021 1:45pm

The pro-EU party Renew has vowed to fold into Change UK. But will the Liberal Democrats do the same?

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 20: Independent Group member MPs (Back row L-R) Former Labour MPs Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Chuka Umunna and Mike Gapes, (centre row L-R) former Labour MPs Angela Smith, Luciana Berger and Ann Coffey, (front row L-R) former Conservative MPs Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry and Labour MP Joan Ryan after a press conference regarding the resignation of three MPs from the Conservative Party on February 20, 2019 in London, England. MPs Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston have resigned from The Conservative Party to join the eight Labour MPs who resigned forming The Independent Group on Monday. They intend to sit as independent MPs occupying the centre ground of British Politics. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

New(ish) centrist pro-European party Renew will fold itself into new centrist pro-European party(ish) Change UK, once the latter has completed its transition from a group into a fully-fledged political party, the two parties have announced.

The parliamentarians formerly known as TIG have had to complete their transition rather more quickly than they would have hoped. As with any new party, they are heavily reliant on media exposure and all things being equal, they would have been better off if they were able to announce their new name and branding over the summer holidays when there will be very little going on in Westminster. But the European elections are a contest that they can’t afford to miss, so they have had to accelerate their development.

The real prize at stake for the various explicitly pro-European parties in this contest isn’t victory – there are too many of them to do that and their non-Brexit aims and interests are too disparate for a tie-up. While the SNP and Plaid Cymru might work well with the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Change UK in parliament, they cannot plausibly cohere around any kind of joint ticket outside of it.

In addition, none of those groups are going to get the level of media oxygen and attention that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is going to get.

But there’s a real prize on offer for Change UK: the relative positions of its party and the Liberal Democrats going into the inevitable talks about an alliance of some shape or form.

Change UK MPs used to talk very freely about the problems with the Liberal Democrats’ brand and the need for that party’s MPs to accept that the jig was up and to join their new grouping. But the stumbling block is that even if they could convince Liberal Democrat MPs to make the leap – a planet-sized if – data can’t defect. And it is data, institutional memory and a pre-existing activist base that the Liberal Democrats bring to the table.

On the Change UK side they bring an untainted brand and, at least theoretically, more potential for growth. How they perform in the European elections will be a significant proof point for the party – and that they have managed to seal an alliance between a pre-existing, albeit relatively new, party with its own activists and organisational apparatus is a boost to their hopes.