The wonderful thing about TIGgers is…

So, this is going to be another politics entry.

Now, more or less since the moment Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, there’s been rumours of a split.  Either the Blairite centre of the party were going to split and form a new party, or they were going to force Corbyn out of position and the left of the party were going to split and form a new party.

Well, today seven Labour MP’s announced they had resigned.  They weren’t forming a new party though.  It’s just a group, called The Independent Group.  Their chief complaint is that the party has become racist and anti semitic.  Remember this, it’ll come up later.  They were very clear that they are open to people joining the group from all of the political parties.  Their claim is that politics in the UK is broken and they are going to fix it.

To be clear, this isn’t like the Gang of Four in the 80’s.  They were heavyweights of the party.  Of these seven, I’ve only heard of two of them and one is most notable for bottling it when changing their mind about running for leader in 2015.

To describe their launch as a clusterfuck is, to be frank, an insult to the phrase clusterfuck.  There were ridiculous sound issues during the press conference.  The BBC needed to apologise after someone was caught on a live mike saying that they are fucked.  Their website lasted about 1.5 seconds before going down.

Then, on Politics Live, one of them was being interviewed.  During the interview, she said about racism that “It’s not about being black or a funny tinge”.  Yeah.  About that racism they were escaping…

So, now to their claim that politics are broken.  They’re right about that.  And if you doubt that politics in the UK are broken, bear in mind that we have a Government who can’t even pass a meaningless vote, never mind something with substance.  But we can’t get shot of them.

Now, let’s look at this new group.  Their website is registered in Panama.  They aren’t a political party, but they are a private company.  This means that they can take donations and do not have to reveal where the money came from.  Oh, and they’ve decided that, despite being elected on a manifesto they no longer believe in written by a political party they no longer are members of, their constituents won’t be given a say in if they want the seven to represent their constituencies anymore.

So much for fixing what’s broken.

I think what they’re hoping for is that a bunch of MP’s from all parties will follow them in quitting their party and joining the group.  Not likely.  Tories won’t, they don’t want to lose power.  A couple of Labour MP’s might, but probably not as many as they hope.  They seem to be close to the position of the Lib Dems anyway, so why would they.  And the SNP and DUP are pretty much united.

Oh, and when their constituents are given a vote, they’re looking for new jobs.

Will