"GANG OF SEVEN" MAKE THEIR MOVE.

Almost 40 years, 4 prominent Labour politicians resigned from their Party and established a new one, the Social Democrats. Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers (few ever remember him) had fallen out with the left-wing leadership of their Party as exemplified by the likes of Michael Foot and Tony Benn, and believed that the new Party would give them a springboard to much greater things.

They were wrong. The SDP never 'took off' and struggled on for only a few years before until it merged with the Liberals, in 1988, to form the current Liberal Democrats. All of the 'Gang of Four' left the House of Commons fairly quickly and gravitated to the Lords, where they vegetated as representatives of a largely irrelevant group. Their action in forming the SDP has been largely forgotten and, if it is remembered, it's only as an example of the futility of political gestures.

Today, 7 Labour politicians of a different generation have announced that they've resigned from the Party and have set up a new group which they term 'The Independent Group'. They have said that they consider all of the existing parties to be incompetent and to have failed; they've also made the usual vacuous remarks about leaving 'tribal politics' behind and dumping 'old fashioned politics'. In short, they're unhappy.

What they are unhappy about is a number of things. They are all rabid pro-Europeans, fiercely opposed to Brexit and prepared to do anything to stop it from happening, while the leadership of the Labour Party is less enthusiastic. Perhaps legitimately, they are unhappy about perceived anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and the Party's failure to take appropriate action. Thirdly, they're not supporters of the current Party leadership, in particularly Jeremy Corbyn, and see him leading the Party evermore leftwards.

Given their clear differences with the Party, leaving it seems to be a logical step, but is it not also doomed to failure ? In order for the move to bear fruit, many more parliamentarians need to be persuaded to join them and, as was the case after the 1981 split, this is unlikely to happen. Members of Parliament are protective of their own positions and party leaders have a limited lifetime; Corbyn won't be there for ever and many Labour Members will simply hunker down and wait for the inevitable change. Why risk their lucrative positions when time will resolve all ?

Is it likely that Members from other parties will feel emboldened and join in ? Again, why would they ? It would lead to deselection and the probable loss of their parliamentary seats, with an almost inevitable loss of influence. In any event, what are the real similarities, apart from Brexit, between the 7 and, say, the current Conservative 'rebels' ? The answer must be "very few".

Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, Mike Gapes, and Ann Coffey; how many of these will still be in Parliament after the next general election ? How many will we still remember in 30 or 40 years ?