People You've Never Heard Of Leave Party They Were Never Really In

I appreciate that this applies more to some of the Seven Dwarfs than to others, but pretty people never turn into good politicians, even if they are sometimes electorally successful ones. They cannot have had the necessary formative experiences. Other things were open to them, which were more attractive at that age. 

If this whole thing were not a confection of the media, then the founding press conference would already have ended, and the project with it, when a journalist had asked about the Iraq War. Thereby exposing the last people, possibly in the world, who still thought that it had been a good idea.

More broadly, like Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, and most of the MPs who joined the SDP, this rabble has left a party that it had scarcely joined, no matter how long certain membership cards had been held.

They have little or no background either in the trade unions or in Labour local government. They never lived in or near their constituencies before being selected, and they have barely done so since. And they have independent means, or the reasonable expectation of a higher income outside Parliament than in it.

But at least the SDP expected that income to come from business. No business would employ this lot. That is why, for all their talk of the private sector, they are perfect strangers to it. No, they would be guaranteed gargantuan salaries and pensions by think tanks and other registered charities that were in turn dependent on public funding.

As for the private company through which the Independent Group is to be run, it was founded 33 days ago. Five weeks. Just think about that for a couple of minutes.