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NEU Senior Regional Support Officer
Change UK: the audacity of hype
Change UK has crashed out of existence - but its centrist backers are unlikely to learn any lessons as to why, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
The short-lived new centrist hope: The Independent Group, a.k.a Change UK, a.k.a Tinge UK

THE failure of The Independent Group for Change — aka Change UK — shows that a whole way of “doing politics” doesn’t do the business anymore.

The theory was that politics involved selling a product to a passive electorate. The product, the party’s “retail offer,” should be selected from a narrow range of “sensible” positions, as designed and decided on by expert gatekeepers: corporate funded think tanks come up with the ideas.

National media pundits and editors decide which policies and parties are the “favourites.” Multi-millionaires fund the parties, which use the money to pay expensive consultants to package them. At some point party members might be brought in as cheerleaders and to do a bit of voluntary work and generally do as they are told.

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