‘You sometimes have to shut up and get on with it’: ex-Tory MP speaks of frustration at split

Anna Soubry has expressed frustration and sadness at the split in Change UK which cost the fledging party six of its 11 MPs this week, saying Chuka Umunna, the most prominent of the quitters, had “made a very serious mistake”.

Soubry, the Broxtowe MP who is now leader of the remaining five, said Change UK, formed after she and two other ex-Tory MPs followed a breakaway group of Labour backbenchers, had been plagued by internal disagreements.

“These things are always difficult, but some people weren’t even in the same book, never mind on the same page,” she said. “It’s not to say they didn’t have huge strengths. But when there are 11 of you, you sometimes have to shut up and get on with it.

“And the idea that you can agree a strategy and then constantly question it, debate it – sometimes you have to say, can we just stop talking and do some frigging campaigning?”

Today in Focus Change UK: how not to set up a political party Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2019/06/11-66721-190612_TIF_changeuk.mp3 00:00:00 00:26:11

Heidi Allen, Change UK’s interim leader, also left on Tuesday. Others who left to sit as independents were another ex-Conservative, Sarah Wollaston, and the former Labour MPs Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker and Angela Smith.

Those remaining with Soubry are Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan and Ann Coffey, all of whom formerly represented Labour.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Change UK’s original 11 MPs, six of whom have left to sit as independents. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Soubry said she was particularly stricken by Umunna’s decision. “I will always be more sad than you can imagine that Chuka is not with us. I think he’s a man of huge ability and talents, and I think he has made a very serious mistake.

“With the five of us, who knows what’s going to happen? But you can’t give up at the first hurdle. You just don’t. Especially when some of that was circumstances over which you had no control. But when there are circumstances over which you do have control you do not behave in the way that, I’m afraid, some of those six did behave.”

Over little more than three months Change UK was buffeted by both difficult political fortunes – in last month’s European election it took just 3% of the vote – as well as public bickering over tactics, for example about tactical voting and whether to pursue a merger with the Liberal Democrats.

But insiders say the disagreements were even more heated behind closed doors, punctuated by differences over leadership arrangements, threats to quit the party and lack of agreement over even the basics of the party’s future direction.

Some of the reported disputes bordered on farce, such as the party almost missing a print deadline for its European election leaflets because one MP wanted a different photograph, and official social media feeds being stopped at the instructions of one member, and then tacitly resumed by another.

Meanwhile, sources amid those who quit argue that Soubry and Leslie – whose spouses are respectively treasurer and chief executive of the party – sought to run Change UK “like a Soviet state”.

Soubry says she will stay as leader until an autumn conference, and has ruled out any idea of joining up with the Lib Dems.

The split was clear, Soubry said, when Umunna told her he did not think Change UK should continue as a formal party.

“I said to him: the movement’s out there, we just need to build a home for that movement, a political party. When he decided that he believed we should not stand candidates I was beyond even disappointed,” she said.

“I believed in him, and believed he should be prime minister of our country. He was a major part of why I left the Conservative party. And here we were, having had a very difficult time, and obviously a disappointing set of election results.

“But hell, 600,000 people voted for us, and we’d found 69 candidates, many of whom have got more ability in their little fingers than some MPs across the whole of the chamber. Some seriously brilliant people.”

The five remaining MPs were “absolutely on the same page”, she said. “We’ve got decades of experience between us. We’re now going to turn our attention on building a membership-based party, and of equal importance we’ve already started the work on formulating policies. That’s already begun.”