The Liberal Democrats are in discussions about recruiting other former Change UK MPs to their ranks, Vince Cable has said, as he welcomed Chuka Umunna to his party.
At a press conference to mark the arrival of Umunna, the former Labour MP who co-formed Change UK in February but abandoned the group just over a week ago, Cable said his party was talking to some of the five other MPs who left Change recently. But he declined to say how many of them could come.
“I’m not quantifying it, but we are having conversations with the other independent MPs,” the Lib Dem leader said. “They’re making a decision based on their own personal circumstances, and in their own time, but it’s clear that we share values and objectives with quite a few of them.”
Reports have suggested that two former Tories who co-formed then left Change UK, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen, could follow Umunna, as well as remain-minded Conservatives such as Phillip Lee.
Umunna insisted that his third party of 2019 would be his last – “I’m not intending to join any others” – and refused to confirm whether he would seek to stand in his current Streatham constituency or another in the next general election.
“I’m a Streatham boy, born and bred, and I’m absolutely committed to my constituency,” he said.
“But I’ve been a member of this party for a day now, almost, and I think for me to start dictating what will happen in the future and pretending somehow that I shouldn’t have to go through the usual processes like everyone else, would be the wrong thing.”
He denied having any immediate leadership ambitions, declining to endorse either Jo Swinson or Ed Davey, who are competing to succeed the departing Cable, as he had “only just arrived”.
The Liberal Democrat leader is chosen by party members in a postal ballot. To become a candidate, an MP must secure nominations from at least 10% of the Liberal Democrat MPs in parliament, and from at least 200 members from more than 20 local parties.
The ballot is carried out using the single transferable vote system. Voters rank their choice of leader in preference. After the first preference votes are counted, if no candidate has over 50% of the vote, then the second preference votes of those who cast their vote for the least popular candidate are reallocated, and so on, until somebody has a majority.
So far in the 2019 race, only Jo Swinson and Ed Davey are confirmed to be running, in which case the ballot will be a straight head-to-head contest.
In a speech at the event, Umunna recalled his regular criticisms of the Lib Dems when they were in coalition with the Conservatives from 2010 to 2015 – he directly opposed Cable as shadow business secretary for much of it – but insisted his new party was now different.
Umunna said the Lib Dems now accepted that policies such as the bedroom tax “should never have happened”, and that the party should never have broken its pledge on university tuition fees.
“Four years on from this party’s time in office, things have changed. The Liberal Democrats have voted against every single one of the Conservative party’s budgets since 2015,” he said.
The split in Change UK – who are now formally called the Independent Group for Change following a lawsuit by the petitions website Change.org – saw Umunna leave to sit as an independent along with Allen and Wollaston and former Labour MPs Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker and Angela Smith.
Five MPs are still under the Change banner: the former Tory Anna Soubry and ex-Labour MPs Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan and Ann Coffey.
Umunna said he would urge these five to follow him: “They’re my friends, we went on a very difficult political journey together. They are good people who have the right values and put the national interest first. We just had difference in views on how you realise what it is you are trying to achieve.”
Umunna said he accepted his recent switches would prompt some mockery, but said he believed it was braver to act rather than, as some other MPs did, sit in a party they no longer agreed with.
“Privately, they say, ‘I agree with every single word you said.’ And I’m, ‘Well, why are you sitting around and not doing anything about it?’ The easy thing is to sit in your comfort zone in a party that you know is doing the wrong things, that has changed beyond belief, and not do anything about,” he said.
“I don’t regret making the decisions I’ve made when l’ve made them. This hasn’t been about some sort of career, or becoming the leader.”
Questioned about his views, Umunna said he accepted that plenty of his former colleagues in Labour were not being complacent, but were seeking to change the party from within.
However, he said, this was impossible. “My assessment is this: the Labour party is not the Labour party that I joined. It is a new and different party now. The leadership has been taken over by the hard left, but so has the NEC, so has the party machine. And it is no longer a broad church.”
