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There have been wry jibes from some journalists on Twitter that their colleagues will be disappointed because they've now lost some of those "party sources" that were so useful to hang stories about disarray in Labour and the Tories on. The fact that people (including journos) had to hurriedly Google most of the IG's members once they announced to find out who the heck they were is quite telling, as is the fact that some of them were facing deselection by their local parties before the next election.

There's already loose talk of the Independent Group displacing the SNP as the third largest party in Westminster. Some pollsters are already projecting 6-14% for the IG at a general election.

It's not even a political party at this point, and at time of that polling there were only seven of them, none elected as IG members, so this seems nonsensically premature! Their very name makes them a non-starter in Scotland (pro-independence voters aren't known for being centrist, and unionist centrists are unlikely to vote for anything with "independent" in its name)!

Its lead spokesperson, Chuka Umunna, has in the past denied seeing evidence of antisemitism in the Labour Party before deciding that it was institutionally racist, opposed a second referendum before deciding he wanted one, and spent most of yesterday trying to rationalize and condemn, with some charitable attempt at understanding, Angela Smith's bonkers "funny tinge" comment, so their messaging, among all the other first-day mishaps, is less than clear.

Are they an anti-(Labour)antisemitism group? A pro-Remain group? Both? What other policies do they have that their members (including today's influx of three Tories) can agree on and form a coherent platform?

It's a far cry from when the SDP was set up. That at least had most of its ducks in a row and some relatively big hitters on board before it launched.

This seems ill-timed, just at this crucial point when the last thing that's needed is a handy distraction for the media to run away with, shambolic, and having gone public way too early. If they'd launched a year ago, there might have been time for some momentum to build up and the edges to be knocked off their public face before we got to the threshold of Brexit. As it is, I can't see them achieving much of use, and after Brexit, if they're still around, they're likely to just muddy the electoral waters.