On Tuesday morning, the 11 founding members of Change UK met for the final time. If the six MPs who ended up breaking away from the party to return to sitting as an independent collective were expecting some kind of plea to stay on board, none was forthcoming. Instead, in a conversation that one MP described as “fraught”, the departing six (Heidi Allen, Luciana Berger, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker, Chuka Umunna, and Sarah Wollaston) were essentially asked to justify to the remaining five (Anna Soubry, the group’s new leader, Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes, Joan Ryan and Ann Coffey) why they were going their own way.
It was a disagreement that had been a long time in the making. When Brexit was delayed past 29 March and the decision was taken to fight a general election, three of the 11 had warned against fighting the European elections. Berger and Smith feared that becoming a party so soon in their development would mean blunting their appeal to Labour MPs flirting with joining, while Shuker warned that fighting a national election so soon in their development was an awfully big test. But the overall mood in the room was that, as one of their number put it to me at the time, “We’d look like a joke to the lobby if we sat out the European elections”.
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