For anyone thinking UK politics was all a bit dull and uneventful lately, a group of seven Labour MPs this morning announced they were resigning from the party to form a new ‘Independent Group’.
Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna led the breakaway, in which they launched a brutal attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to back a second Brexit referendum and the party’s recent handling of the ongoing anti-Semitism crisis.
So, with 39 days left to Brexit the opposition is literally falling apart.
Or, as someone who probably didn’t realise they were being picked up by a BBC microphone and broadcast to the nation live, said: “This is mad. Between this and Brexit we’re fucked.”
Here’s how the #LabourSplit news conference unfolded.
The Independent Group made their first announcement with the unveiling of their bold retro logo.
OK, that’s not actually it, but their very basic website and logo was fairly uninspiring.
Perhaps inevitably, this prompted comparisons to a certain genre of adverts.
And let’s face it, they totally missed a trick with the name.
Mike Gapes however, was all over the opportunity to rename himself and seems to have taken a leaf from a Marvel Comic.
It’s not clear how much financial backing the new group has just yet and as a potential fresh political movement they are still a little short of members, but some on Twitter were sure that opponents would soon find out who is to blame.
One suggestion for how they might address their lack of infrastructure sought to monopolise on a recent report that Corbyn’s son is renting out his ex-council flat on AirBnB for a tidy profit.
Jeremy Corbyn himself responded to the news by saying he was “disappointed”, before adding that Labour at the last election “increase[d] our vote by the largest share since 1945”.
Funnily enough though, the Labour leader didn’t mention what had happened since then.
And shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry suffered a rather unfortunate cropping of her statement on Facebook.
But obviously die-hard Corbyn supporters took the news with good grace and humility…
We’ll give Umunna the last word: “The bottom line is this – politics is broken.”