Change UK, formerly known as the Independent Group, TIG or to some TINGE, has split:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48515505
One might think its all a bit Life of Brian and that the extreme centre cant hold but somewhere in there, serious political issues are at work.
As Grace Blakeley wrote in the New Statesman in February a key issue is that the 11 MPs now 6&5 want the world to be as it was before the 2008 crash. But it isnt and it cant be. Austerity has to be grappled with:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2019/02/post-crash-era-no-time-centrism#amp
This doesnt mean that we are doomed to a political future of racism and politics for the rich with Johnson and Farage but it does mean that just cutting services, depressing wages and doing little about climate change, while the well off go about their lives as before is unsustainable.
Perhaps the problem with Change UK was that many people thought it was really No Change UK.
A deeper problem was the groups’s lack of weight, organisation and a framework of grassroots support. Once the LibDems made up their mind that they didnt like Change UK as it was, they rightly underlined the difference between it and the SDP
Here is a brief summary I did again in February about one aspect of that, the question of political experience of lack of it:
The political experience of the SDP’s Gang of Four & the ‘Independent’ Group 2019
We can only continue to hope and press for a General Election to resolve the issue of the 6+5 in political terms
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