The prospect of the Democratic Socialists of America member’s victory in the mayoral race has terrified billionaires and outraged the centrist liberal Establishment by showing that listening to voters about class issues works, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Latest editorial
Whatever happened to ‘new centrist party’ United for Change?
With Change UK having flopped, SOLOMON HUGHES takes a look at the fortunes of another centrist group set up by Lovefilm founder Simon Franks
Former Change UK and Labour MP Chuka Umunna (left) with Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable
Sixty Red-Green seats in a hung parliament could force Labour to choose between the death of centrism or accommodation with the left — but only if enough of us join the Greens by July 31 and support Zack Polanski’s leadership, writes JAMES MEADWAY
For the first time in years, the dominant voice within Chile’s official left comes not from neoliberal centrists but from the world of labour, writes LEONEL POBLETE CODUTTI
200 years since the first dinosaur was described and 25 after its record-breaking predecessor, the BBC has brought back Walking with Dinosaurs. BEN CHACKO assesses what works and what doesn’t
Just as the Chilcot inquiry eventually exposed government failings over the Iraq war, a full independent investigation into British complicity in Israeli war crimes has become inevitable — despite official obstruction, writes JEREMY CORBYN MP
The Congolese independence leader’s uncompromising speech about 80 years of European colonial brutality and injustice went round the world in 1960, and within months, he had been executed by Belgian and CIA-backed forces, writes KEITH BARLOW
NEWLY launched “centrist” party Change UK is in serious difficulty, with founder member Chuka Umunna quitting to join the Lib Dems after grim EU election results. But what about the other “new centrist party,” United for Change, set up by multimillionaire Simon Franks?
According to its latest accounts, United for Change has plenty of money. But that doesn’t buy it success: in the latest stumble, its chief executive has resigned as its public launch recedes into the distance.
This new party started as a company with the codename-sounding title Project One Movement. The latest accounts for the company, since renamed United for Change, were filed in June.
Because United for Change is filing the less detailed accounts of a small company, these do not show its turnover. They do give some insight though.
United for Change has a full-time staff recruited from PR, marketing and fundraising backgrounds, with a smattering of former student politicians and ex-Labour types.
The accounts show that, even after paying their staff salaries and other costs, like polling, United for Change still has £263,319 of cash savings left in the bank.
That is a fair war chest. When it was launched last April reports suggested they had access to £50 million in pledges.
Those may be exaggerated promises, but it seems money isn’t a problem. Everything else is. Its founder member and current chief executive Ryan Wain told me that he resigned in June.
Wain became chief executive last July when his predecessor, finance investor and former Goldman Sachs investor Adam Knight also resigned to split away to set up his own new centrist party, called Twelve Together.
Knight’s Twelve Together party never actually materialised and now Knight, like Umunna, is backing the Lib Dems.
United for Change is also lowering its target. Last December Wain told the Times he wanted to set up a movement that “will win the next general election.”
Last month Wain told The Real Agenda, a small news podcast, that United for Change was only “a political movement” with a “digital platform” not a “party.”
It is also stuck, since it plans to launch after Brexit because it doesn’t “want to be drawn into a Remain or Leave camp.”
It planned to launch this summer, but Brexit delay is messing up timings: Franks decided against being a Remain party even though this caused Knight and other staff to leave, because, led by private polling, he wants to make tough noises on “confidence in our immigration system.” This has left his would-be party in limbo.
Franks has the fortune to bankroll this scheme by selling his DVDs-by-post company Lovefilm to Amazon for around £200m.
But Amazon promptly closed Lovefilm down — it seems Amazon just wanted to absorb the subscribers for its online video service and shut down the competition.
There is a good chance United for Change will just collapse, with what is left from the wreckage ending up in its bigger competitor the Lib Dems as well.
On the positive side, there is a dystopian fear that the super-rich can easily influence politics by spending their money on polling, PR, spin and online advertising.
The ongoing failure of United for Change suggests that trying to substitute money for an actual rank-and-file membership is much harder than it sounds.
I approached Franks for comment, but he made no response.
More from this author
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how the PM is channelling the spirit of Reagan and Thatcher with a ‘two-tier’ nuclear deterrent, whose Greenham Common predecessor was eventually fought off by a bunch of ‘punks and crazies’
Israel’s combination of starvation, coercion and murder is part of a carefully concerted plan to ensure Palestinian compliance – as shown in leaked details about the sinister Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which reveal similarities to hunger manipulation projects in Vietnam, Malaya and Kenya, says SOLOMON HUGHES
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how six MPs enjoyed £400-£600 hospitality at Ditchley Park for Google’s ‘AI parliamentary scheme’ — supposedly to develop ‘effective scrutiny’ of artificial intelligence, but actually funded by the increasingly unsavoury tech giant itself
SOLOMON HUGHES details how the firm has quickly moved on to buttering-up Labour MPs after the fall of the Tories so it can continue to ‘win both ways’ collecting public and private cash by undermining the NHS
