The Independent Group isn’t just a media darling – ordinary people are cautiously welcoming it too The hung parliament result of the 2017 election hinted at a yearning among the general public for something new

In 2016, the populists shook politics to its core, disrupting the technocracy and leaving the old centre ground establishment reeling. This year, it is the turn of the centrists to get their own back: the disrupted have become the disrupters. They are doing things centrists aren’t supposed to do: the slick and smooth politicians have a website which crashes, the so-called careerists are risking their political livelihoods on the riskiest of start-ups.

We are only five days into this Centrist Spring, and, like any embryonic revolution it is messy, chaotic, and no-one knows where it will end up. It could be full of false hopes and empty promises that fizzle out before the end of Lent, or it could change politics for the next decade. But it cannot simply be ignored.

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The good cop and bad cop outriders for Labour and Conservative parties are out in force as they try to contain the Independent Group’s momentum. Good cop voices are soothing, moderate, disappointed and disbelieving that their MPs have deserted their parties which are so welcoming and tolerant.

Bad cop voices sneer that a new party will never work, that they have no policies, or that the 11 MPs must fight by-elections. In the latest attack line, critics from both Labour and the Tories claim TIG is only making such a splash with the London-centric media because it seems designed to appeal to the metropolitan elite.

A potential for broad appeal

But is this really true, or can a new centrist party appeal beyond political journalists thrilled to be writing about something other than Brexit? Speaking personally, as someone whose own centre-left politics sprang out of a 1980s Liverpool childhood spent repulsed by both Margaret Thatcher and Derek Hatton, and who last year gave up on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour over antisemitism, I am intrigued at the prospect of no longer being politically homeless. Yet I have reservations about whatever party emerges from TIG – how they reconcile internal differences over tax and spending, whether they will be more than just a Brexit protest group, and, yes, what exactly their policies will be.

‘Finally, the don’t knows have an alternative’

But to describe a new centrist party as something only of interest to Westminster is to miss the bigger picture. For a start, TIG has not received the warmest of welcomes across the press: yesterday, the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Sun and Express all splashed on stories heavily critical of the Tory defectors – or “turncoats” as The Sun described them.

The hung parliament exposed a desire for something new

What’s more, the hung parliament result of the 2017 election hinted at a yearning among the general public for something other than Labour and Conservative, and since then “Don’t Know” has performed consistently strongly in the polls. Now the don’t knows have an alternative, there is not insignificant interest: a snap Sky News Data poll earlier this week put TIG or a new party on 10 per cent, third behind the two main parties and ahead of the Liberal Democrats, while a YouGov poll for The Times showed the centrist movement on 14 per cent, with Labour the main net loser of support to the new party. It is not yet earth-moving, but the crockery is wobbling on the mantlepiece.

And not that Twitter is everything, but @theindgroup account has more than 160,000 followers after just five days, rather more than Labour’s grassroots networking organisation Momentum. Yet it must be said, Twitter loves novelty and this does not suggest all of those 160,000 followers support the movement – in fact, many of them will no doubt be following for the political drama.

‘If a new party is really about changing politics, its MPs need to show humility’

What’s more, they don’t seem to have a significant Facebook presence, with just over 7,000 followers to their page. If they want to break through to voters across the country, Facebook is surely a more reliable route than Twitter.

Can a new centrist party get its message heard among voters who don’t use social media and might just regard this movement as Westminster whimsy? Can it avoid the mistakes of the 2016 referendum Remain campaign, which too often looked and sounded like a group of metropolitan know-it-alls lecturing the provinces about a European Union they knew little about?

The polls show there is an appetite for a new party, but in turn, if a new party really is about changing politics and doing things in a different way, its MPs need to show humility, and acknowledge that they don’t always know best. But they are not the only ones: those from Labour and the Tories who sneer at the defectors as Westminster media-centric should show humility too, and reflect on why those MPs felt compelled to risk everything by leaving their side.

@janemerrick23