BIRKENHEAD, England — They are the politicians at the heart of the U.K.'s slow motion political crack-up — now they have to win solo to stay in the game.

If the long-predicted reconfiguration of British politics under the strain of Brexit is to come to pass, watch out on election night for the success or failure of a new breed of independent candidates.

Prominent MPs, including some former ministers, who now find themselves profoundly at odds with their party leadership have either been booted out of their political home or chosen to go it alone.

That's a huge step in a political culture and electoral system heavily dominated by two main parties. Independent candidates are not new to the British political scene, but they rarely win. And when they do, they have in the past struggled to make much of an impact in parliament.

This time might be different.

Mark Greenburgh, a former Buckinghamshire council leader who is campaigning for Grieve, said he quit the Tories when they became “uncaring, out of touch extremists.”

With both main parties shifting to the extremes and fractures beginning to appear (the last parliament ended with 36 MPs no longer in the two main parties due to them leaving or having been expelled for a variety of reasons) the U.K.'s general election on December 12 will be a defining moment. It will either shore up the cracks and so consolidate the main parties' grip, or widen the fissures opened up by Brexit. In a highly volatile and complex series of electoral contests, the fate of independent candidates will be a good barometer of which it will turn out to be.

Those who have cast off their traditional party allegiances say there is a political appetite for something different.

“This election will be fought in 650 constituencies and I don't think the choice of hard left or hard Brexit in this seat is sufficient. It's incumbent on me to provide an alternative to that,” said Gavin Shuker, an anti-Brexit former Labour MP who quit his party in protest at leader Jeremy Corbyn but is standing again in Luton South.

Ex-Labour MP Frank Field, who is standing on a pro-Brexit platform in Birkenhead, Liverpool, said the increase in independent candidates “says something about how impossible it has been for both major parties to grapple effectively with a new and emerging agenda.” Field quit the Labour Party in 2018 over what he said was bullying and a failure to tackle anti-Semitism, after losing a confidence vote held by his local party.

In the Number Seven community cafe, which doubles up as a not-for-profit supermarket to help support hard-up locals, Field said: “[The main parties] want to put the voters into boxes. And of course lots of people vote out of party loyalty but others are trying to get the parties to represent their emerging views.”

Dominic Grieve, a pro-EU former Tory MP who was stripped of the whip for rebelling on Brexit, is telling voters on the doorstep in leafy Beaconsfield that Johnson will end up forcing a no-deal Brexit on Britain, while simultaneously promising not to facilitate their greatest fear: allowing a Corbyn victory.

He said on a door-knocking drive in the affluent Gerrards Cross area: “Boris's populism and demagoguery, and what is perceived to be his inability to tell truth and falsehood apart, are really serious issues pushing people out of the Conservative Party.” But he also noted: “Corbyn is the bogeyman of middle England. So there is a fear that by voting for me, it might put Corbyn into Downing Street.”

Mark Greenburgh, a former Buckinghamshire council leader who is campaigning for Grieve, said he quit the Tories when they became “uncaring, out of touch extremists.”

Another helper, the ex-Labour peer Michael Cashman, ditched Corbyn over his equivocation over Brexit ahead of the European Parliament election, instead backing the Liberal Democrats. He said: “In some respects, tribalism in politics, except in its extremes, is dying and we are seeing a formation around people who fight on the basis of integrity and principle and who are willing to lose on the basis of principle and not its absence.”

Ground war tactics

The three campaigns, like other independent drives around the country, all face the same problem: working out how to reach their target vote without the oversight or national clout of a party machine. But they have come up with different solutions.

“The thing that has been the most liberating is being just released from all of that stuff” — Anti-Brexit former Labour MP Gavin Shuker

Grieve was hitting the doorstep in Beaconsfield as soon as the campaign began and has been canvassing nonstop, even on Sundays, which he has never done before. On his first campaign day, 130 people turned up to help. On his second, there were 150. His team has already knocked on thousands of doors and have started to build a database of where the support lies — a crucial tool that age-old party machines take for granted. The Lib Dems have stood down in Grieve's seat (they are also supporting Shuker) but it is against electoral law for them to share data with him.

Early on in the campaign he told supporters to stop donating cash because he already had enough to hit the legal spending limit. At one door he told an elderly couple who wanted to donate that they could send some funds to his ex-Tory allies fighting other seats as independents.

Grieve said becoming a one-man show after decades campaigning under the Tory banner was “in some ways quite lonely,” before quickly adding: “But actually I don't feel very lonely because there is a lot of warmth [from helpers].”

He said the national party never offered much campaign assistance anyway, because the seat is such a safe Tory stronghold. “In many ways I'm better supported now than I have been in past elections,” he said. “The seat has been so safe that actually a massive campaign has never been mounted.”

Speaking in his self-contained campaign office in Luton, where the modern finish and exposed brickwork give the feel of a tech startup, Shuker said he has not done much door-knocking in the campaign so far. “I don't think people are really tuned in at the moment,” he explained. Instead, his team have been preparing leaflets and focusing on their online drive, while gearing up for a “real blitz” on the streets in the final two weeks of the campaign.

Shuker said he has built a network of around 50 people so far who will be able to help. He says he is relieved to be out of internal Labour politics. “The thing that has been the most liberating is being just released from all of that stuff,” he said.

Field and his new Birkenhead Social Justice Party (of one) takes a scattergun approach to door-knocking. His campaign approach is chiefly continuing with business as usual: looking for problems he can solve if he is reelected. He told one woman he would ask about getting her daughter moved to a new council house while her current home is riddled with damp. He met traders in the Birkenhead Market who want to breathe life into the dilapidated stalls — once a thriving business hub — by moving to a new location.

Asked whether the campaign is building a dataset, Field said: “We have always fought it on a blanket basis and we will try to fight it on a blanket basis this time.” Indeed, during a short canvassing session in a housing estate in the Rock Ferry area, Field picked which doors to knock on a whim and did not record any information about the responses — an unusual approach for a local campaign. He insisted supporters have been in touch to help and said he has been soliciting £50 donations on the doorstep.

“I've always been a lone ranger,” he said. “My election address would have been what I would and wouldn’t vote for in the Labour manifesto but this time I’ve got my own manifesto totally.”

Local celebrity

Having been the MP for Birkenhead since 1979, winning majorities of up to 25,500, Field is banking on his own personal appeal in the election. “Images about politics are built up over long periods of time,” he said. “And people roughly know what my record is on issues.”

Field has name recognition in Birkenhead other MPs would die for. In Rock Ferry, many who answered the door knew him by his first name.

Stephen Loftus, 61, said: “About 45 years ago when he was first the MP here he helped me and my family get a flat from the council. It was a roof over our heads and I’ll never forget it.” Elizabeth Linfield, 66, said: “If Frank is on the ballot paper people will vote for him. It doesn’t matter if he’s in a party or not. When people go to vote they will look for that name.”

“I want Brexit and I want it now. I will vote Conservative. I can hear my grandfather spinning in his grave” — Former Labour voter Lorna Cronin

But the fight is not plain sailing, as voters in the more affluent Hamilton Square area made clear. Birkenhead has elected a Labour MP since 1950 and Field has his own enormous majority to overturn.

“I like Frank. He has done a lot around here and people like him,” said 56-year-old Kay Miller. “But my dad will kill me if I don’t vote Labour.” Clive Jones, 62, said: “I have always voted for Labour. I can’t vote for Frank because he is for Brexit and I want another referendum.”

In Beaconsfield, where Grieve has been the MP since 1997, he hopes his personal brand will help.

“I've been around for 22 years,” he said. “And I am actually getting people who believe in Brexit who say they're still going to vote for me because they think I'm a reasonable local MP.”

One voter on the doorstep, Nick Garner, said he hopes Grieve wins the race and asked for a selfie. Another, 89-year-old Valerie Hinds, said Grieve attends her church. But she was just about to send cash off to the local Tory party. She was left unsure where to turn when Grieve told her he was no longer the Tory candidate. “I’ve been watching it all on the television and reading it all in the newspaper and I thought: stop the world I want to get off,” she said. Grieve responded dryly: “That is what lots of us feel … we all need prayers.”

In Luton South, Shuker argued that he has worked hard since he was first elected in 2010 to restore the reputation in the local party after his predecessor, Margaret Moran, stood down. She chose to quit parliament after it emerged she had made fraudulent expenses claims totalling £53,000. “The fact that doesn't come up anymore points to my success,” Shuker added.

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In Luton town centre, Patricia Price, 50, said she was glad Shuker was standing as an independent. “If he was Labour I would really struggle because I don’t want to vote Labour and I don’t want to vote Conservative,” she explained. “So the fact he is an independent makes it really easy for me to vote because I quite like what he does as a local MP.”

But Lorna Cronin, a 73-year-old former Labour voter, made clear that Shuker’s campaign against Brexit in the Leave-voting seat will not do him any favours. “I want Brexit and I want it now,” she said. “I will vote Conservative. I can hear my grandfather spinning in his grave.”

Reshaping politics

Despite the odds stacked against them, a handful of wins by independents could have an important impact on the next parliament.

Some hope it will be the next stage in the political rupture that might reshape the current two-party system. “There are some people who are hoping it could be the germination of a new party,” said Grieve — although he noted that others hope the Conservative Party will be glued back together once Johnson is no longer leader.

Field said the election of independents could knock the two main parties off the course of inevitable doom. “Political parties usually take a long time to die,” he said. “Either the parties are going to read the results of the independent votes on December 13 onwards and learn from them — and I hope they will have to — or they will go even more into the bunker and make their own deaths more certain.”

Independent MPs can fight in the middle, Shuker argued, but are unlikely to be the driving force.

Shuker offered a more pessimistic take.

He said the U.K. was about to write its third overarching story since the war. The first was about the big state, which although it worked for a while ended with ungovernable chaos. The second was about the freedom of the markets under Margaret Thatcher, which boosted wealth but also fueled inequality and led to the 2008 crash and another decade of turmoil.

The overarching question is whether the nation wants to be anti-globalism and anti-immigration or not, he said. “I suspect the next 20 or 30 years will be a cultural divide in British politics between 'open' and 'closed' and I suspect that whoever unites their block most effectively will have hegemony."

Independent MPs can fight in the middle, Shuker argued, but are unlikely to be the driving force. “I suspect this is where the political parties will be baked in now, sadly, for the rest of my political lifetime, as long as that will be."

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