Change UK forced to change its name — again

Change UK MP Anna Soubry speaks during a European Parliament election campaign rally at the Manchester Technology Centre in Manchester, northwest England, on May 21, 2019. - Despite voting in a referendum to leave the European Union in 2016 Britain is braced to take part in the European Parliament election on May 23. (Photo by Paul ELLIS / AFP) (Photo credit should read PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s been a tough old month for Change UK. First came the European elections: nul points. Then came the split: bye-bye Chuka, bye-bye Heidi, bye-bye Sarah Wollaston, bye-bye three others whose names we’ve already forgotten and who definitely exist.

Surely, your Soubrys and your Gapeses and your Coffeys and your Ryans and your Leslies must have thought, it can’t get any worse. Sure, we outnumbered journalists at our first press briefing at continuity Change UK. But, as the Master himself once said, things can only get better.

Reader, it could. And it did.

CHUK, it turns out, have been carrying a dark secret with them for months. Darker than Mike Gapes’ take on the Iraq War. Even more depraved than Joan Ryan’s views on proportional representation.

In a confession this afternoon — dropped in the aftermath of the first Conservative leadership ballot in an attempt to guarantee the tiny amount of coverage they attract as a matter of course — the party who cannot be named for legal reasons said:

Ahead of the European elections, lawyers for the organisation Change.org disputed our right to register as ‘Change UK’ with the Electoral Commission.

Under threat of legal action by Change.org, which would have involved each MP being sued personally, and with no time left to register a new party name to contest the elections, our leadership at the time felt we had no option but to sign a legal agreement preventing the permanent use of the name Change UK once the campaign was over.

We are now legally obliged to make a formal application to the Electoral Commission, to amend our name by 15th June, so today we are applying to register ourselves as ‘The Independent Group for Change’ and will await the Electoral Commission’s decision.

We remain determined as a party to tackle the big issues facing the country. Preventing a disastrous no deal Brexit and fixing Britain’s broken politics remain our absolute focus as we begin to build our new policy platform.

So there you have it. The Independent Group is dead. Long live Change UK! Change UK is dead. Long live the Independent Group for Change!

Hang on. I think it’s already dead