Tuesday morning saw the long-awaited departure of seven Labour MPs: Chucka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Lesley, Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, Ann Coffey and Gavin Shuker all felt the time was right to break away from the party. In the press conference that followed, each gave their heartfelt reasons for leaving; Luciana Berger claiming that the Labour party is ‘institutionally antisemitic’, Angela Smith a hatred of ‘Left-Wing Intellectuals’ who see being poor as a ‘state of grace’ and Chucka Umunna, the face of the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign could no longer toe the party line on Brexit. In the days that followed Labour’s Joan Ryan and the Torie’s Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston also defected to the new Independent Group.

The group claim to create a space for the ‘politically homeless’; those who no longer feel comfortable in a left-wing Labour party nor in the Conservatives who are apparently increasingly led by the proclivities of Jacob Reese-Mogg’s European Research Group (ERG). Instead, they aim to create a ‘radical centre’ and a new way of doing politics away from the aggression, racism and Westminster elite.

However, the problems with this group are as deeply entrenched as is the feeling of disorientation when greeted with the phrase ‘radical centre’ or the confusion of what may happen once the uniting factor of being anti-Brexit fails to obscure the divergent views and conflicting voting records of this 11.

The problems began immediately. No sooner had the Labour seven given a press conference where they talked of the abhorrent racism within the party than Angela Smith on Politics Live gestured towards Ash Sarkar, whose mother is of Bengali origin, and called her a ‘funny tinge’. She later apologised for any offence caused saying she was very tired from 6 hours of media attention. Again, good luck. As Ash pointed out, the fact that Smith is now an independent candidate means she does not have to answer to any complaints process that would be within an established party: there is no one to hold Smith or anyone else accountable in this new group.

As a group, not a party, this unaccountability spreads to other aspects; they don’t have to be transparent about funding, lobbying or anything else. Nor do they have any policies despite registering the domain name for their website in 2015. When asked on the Today Programme what he disagrees with from the 2017 manifesto, Chucka Umunna failed to point to anything that he could refute, talking instead to the shared ‘values’ of the group. These values of being proud of your country, believing in parliamentary democracy and a free media are the vaguest of the vague, something that neither the Tories or Labour disagree with and with no indication of how they might be interpreted as policy.

Fundamentally, they are unaccountable to their electorate. Each stood for their seat on either the Conservative or Labour manifesto. It would seem logical for individuals so enchanted by the idea of democracy that their main uniting values are calling for a People’s Vote and belief in a representative democracy, that they ought to stand for byelections with their new values mapped out. Instead, each member of the group has claimed that a byelection would be a ‘distraction’ when we are less than 1000 hours from Brexit. This is true, it is time to getting the hell on with it and this argument would have some weight if their actions hadn’t focused all media attention in a crucial week towards their project rather than pushing for cross-party collaboration and a plan that will save us from no deal.

In this, politically confused moment, a recent Hope Not Hate poll found that 68% of the population now say that there is not a political party that speaks for them and 55% think the political system is broken, legitimising the groups claim that there is a large subset of the ‘politically homeless’. In our first-past-the-post system, third (the poor Lib Dems have not been a prominent feature of discussions around the group) or fourth parties do not fare well and the chance of replicating the (initial) success of Macron’s centrist La République en Marche is minimal. However, looking at the impact of UKIP on the political landscape of the last ten years shows how much sway a party with no hope of election can have on the political direction of the country. Given the differences at the heart of the group, it seems unlikely they can offer the magnetic pull needed to alter the shape of politics. But in the short term, their strong anti-Brexit stance may augment the last days of withdrawal. Beyond the 29th of March, it may take more to hold together the many strands red and blue tangled up in the group.