Perhaps the Independent Group – or the party into which it will inevitably morph – will achieve little electorally. Critics are quick to point to the experience of the SDP in the 1980s and the crushing nature of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system. But those who obsess over the chances of a breakthrough in a general election are missing the point entirely. The very emergence of TIG is the single best thing to happen to British politics in some years. The breakaway faction offers a potential choice to voters that goes beyond hard-left vision of Jeremy Corbyn and the laissez-faire madness championed by the Tories. It exposes the vacuous claim of the far left that ‘centrism’ is now dead and has no natural constituency. It shakes up the arithmetic in Parliament and presents some new possibilities in the endless and painful debate over Brexit. (Indeed, in recent days John McDonnell and others have signalled that Labour might be more inclined to embrace a second
Phil Woodford co-hosts Colourful Radio's weekly news review show from London. He previously stood on two occasions as a Labour Parliamentary candidate.