Pro-EU Change UK is all at sea while Farage’s new Brexit Party flies high in polls

Change UK, the new pro-second-referendum group, has ambitions to be the political party for all ‘remain’ voters in May’s EU Parliament elections, but why are they polling so badly?

The EU remainers’ answer to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, could not be experiencing more contrasting fortunes. While it’s all smiles for Farage’s slick new anti-EU party as it tops EU election opinion polls in the high 20s, Change UK (the Independent Group), is struggling to cause any political tremors with single-digit figures.

With four weeks to go until Britons head to the voting booths the new group of 11 Labour and Tory MP defectors have a lot of ground to make up, after making a series of fundamental errors.

Lack of a well-known leader

The Brexit Party has Mr Brexit himself, Nigel Farage, spearheading its campaign, while Change UK ostensibly suffer from a lack of name recognition within their ranks, with charismatic personalities in short supply.

The party’s Interim leader, the former Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire, Heidi Allen, is not a household name. She claimed in an interview for ITV in March that she would not make a good prime minister, saying: “I cry all the time, I’m terrible, I’m too emotional by half.” Hardly the response of a confident leader.

Furthermore, the fact that Allen is only a interim chief means that there is a certain lack of direction at the top, with an inability to wield enough power, and set out her clear vision for the party.

If you cannot rely on your established brand name, as Labour and the Conservatives can, then you will inevitably suffer at the polls without a strong leader with a clear vision. At present, Change UK is severely struggling in this area.

Poor Branding

The official name ‘Change UK - The Independent Group’ has been ridiculed by many on social media. For one, it’s incredibly long and has also triggered accusations that the group represents the opposite of ‘change,’ due to the makeup of centrist politicians who promote the neoliberal economic status quo.

Also, how much ‘change’ do they want to create in British politics if they’re not willing to stand in byelections to fight re-election on a different platform to the one they were voted in on in 2017? Allen has also revealed that she would not vote against Theresa May’s Tory government in a no-confidence vote, which appears a strange tactic if you’re running on a ‘change’ platform.

Their ‘barcode’ logo hasn’t exactly gone down a treat either, with one Twitter user cheekily suggesting they chose it because they can be “easily bought.”

Who needs policies, we have “shared values”

To date, the group has no official manifesto that outlines their policies. Party spokesperson Chuka Umunna has issued a 50-page pamphlet setting out his own personal ideas, but has admitted the group is yet to agree on a set of policies.

At the launch of the new centrist party in February, Allen struggled to come up with unified policy positions, insisting that the group has come together around a set of “shared values.”

It led to many on Twitter to ask what possibly could these shared values be, seeing as they were formed by lawmakers from both the right and the left of the political spectrum. Some suggested it could be their “shared” fear/dislike of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Poor vetting of candidates

Within 24 hours of parading their candidates for the European Parliament elections on May 23, two were forced to resign after a series of offensive messages surfaced on social media.

Joseph Russo, who was announced as the party’s top candidate for Scotland quit after the discovery of a tweet from 2012, in which he claimed: “Black women scare me. I put this down to be chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black wh***.”

It can be no surprise that the party has recruited a branding agency, The&Partnership, to “sharpen up” its image. The agency has run advertising campaigns for companies such as Toyota and Lexus.

Too little, too late? Possibly, but the ‘Remain Party’ needs to change course drastically, otherwise they could be headed for oblivion at the upcoming elections which will go some way in gauging the British public’s mood on the Brexit shambles being played out at Westminster.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.