Fledgling party to be renamed for third time after legal threat from petitions website

The recent run of ill fortune for Change UK has struck again, with the breakaway political party announcing it will change its name once more after a legal challenge from the similarly named online petition website.

Change UK, which lost six of its 11 MPs last week, has applied to the Electoral Commission to be known as the Independent Group for Change, the party said in a statement.

The party was initially known as the Independent Group, or TIG, when seven Labour and four Conservative MPs left their parties in February. Ahead of the European elections, the group then sought to register as Change UK – the Independent Group.

However, this brought the promise of a legal challenge from the petitions website Change.org, which was founded in 2007. Change UK said it had previously agreed a deal under which the party name would be changed after the European elections.

The party statement said: “Under threat of legal action by Change.org, which would have involved each MP being sued personally, and with no time left to register a new party name to contest the elections, our leadership at the time felt we had no option but to sign a legal agreement preventing the permanent use of the name Change UK once the campaign was over.

“We are now legally obliged to make a formal application to the Electoral Commission, to amend our name by 15 June, so today we are applying to register ourselves as ‘The Independent Group for Change’ and will await the Electoral Commission’s decision.”

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At the time, the interim leader was the former Tory Heidi Allen, who is among the six MPs to have left, who now sit as independents. The others were another ex-Conservative, Sarah Wollaston, and the former Labour MPs Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker and Angela Smith.

Those remaining are the former Tory Anna Soubry, the party’s new leader, along with Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan and Ann Coffey, all of whom formerly represented Labour.

Other hiccups for the party include not being allowed to use its planned logo at the European elections, which showed the “TIG” initials along with #Change. The Electoral Commission ruled this was not sufficiently well known.

Despite the high-profile launch, Change UK gained only 3.3% of UK votes at the European elections, winning no MEPs.

The party statement said it remained determined “to tackle the big issues facing the country”. It added: “Preventing a disastrous no-deal Brexit and fixing Britain’s broken politics remain our absolute focus as we begin to build our new policy platform.”