The Waugh Zone Tuesday February 19, 2019

This morning’s independent Waugh Zone is from Ned Simons. Paul is back tomorrow.

Change how you run the party or more MPs will quit, Tom Watson warned Jeremy Corbyn yesterday. “We are losing members and now losing MPs,” he said.

Chuka Umunna, the notional leader of the new Independent Group of MPs, said this morning he hoped it would have evolved into a proper political party “by the end of the year”.

HuffPost’s Rachel Wearmouth breaks down how yesterday unfolded. “Westminster’s most dramatic day since Brexit began in silence,” she reports. “One-by-one, seven Labour MPs looked across a table at one another and pressed send on emails destined to make history.” Luciana Berger, who opened yesterday morning’s press conference, tells us: “There were no doubters.”

There are demands from Corbyn allies that the gang of seven submit themselves to by-elections to prove themselves. Labour is fundraising off the defections. And I’m told Momentum are already making plans to launch campaigns in each seat.

Just one day into the breakaway it might be too soon to tell what impact it will have. But as Paul notes in his analysis of the day, their supporters will see the MPs as the Magnificent Seven of Centrism while their enemies will view them as the Seven Dwarfs of Sellout-ism. A Survation poll conducted yesterday has attracted some interest in Westminster as it puts the Conservatives on 39%, Labour on 34% and “a new centrist party opposed to Brexit” on a pretty healthy 8%.

If there is a playbook on how to launch a new political party, it would include some strong dos and some strong don’ts. Top of the list of ‘gah, can we not’ must be triggering accusations of racism. Angela Smith had to apologise yesterday afternoon for almost describing non-white people on Politics Live as having a “funny tinge”. Which was not very funny and also extremely cringe.

On the day seven MPs quit, Derek Hatton, the former Militant who expelled from the party in 1986, was allowed back in. “Of course it’s good to be back, in fact in a way I’ve never left,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He branded the gang of seven “pathetic” for deciding to “run away” from Labour.

The splitters would like more MPs to join them. BuzzFeed reports yesterday was initially expected to see 30 Labour MPs quit. Asked on Newsnight last night if she would leave Labour, Siobhain McDonagh could only say: “This is really hard.” Could she see herself resigning fomr the party in a month’s time? “I hope not.”