Adam Boulton, editor-at-large
The sand is white. The temperature is above 26C (80F). Pelicans fly by on the sea breeze. There’s not a lot to complain about on a long-planned midwinter break in Florida.
Except FOMO. Thanks to social media we now have a four-letter word for Fear Of Missing Out. As the Labour and Conservative parties splinter, the professional political journalist part of me certainly wonders if I should have been back in Westminster for the excitement.
We chose our time to be away carefully: half-term is when MPs were also due to take a week’s break. I got a little worried when Theresa May cancelled the recess because there are less than six weeks until Brexit on 29 March.
But I breathed a sigh of relief when, true to form, the prime minister kicked the can further down the road and ruled that MPs wouldn’t be asked to debate anything important during their period of cancelled leave.
Nothing much was going to happen. I wouldn’t miss much if I handed over my All Out Politics show and my Sunday Times column for a week. Even when a friend on the inside told me the splits were coming, he thought they wouldn’t begin until the week of 27 February when the Commons is due to debate Brexit again.
How wrong we were.
We had overlooked Mrs May’s reverse Midas touch, whereby anything she does only seems to make matters worse. The period of enforced idleness provided the perfect opportunity to make a political splash.
While I’ve been away, the kaleidoscope of British politics has been shaken (even if Mrs May and Jeremy Corbyn didn’t want to talk about it at PMQs).
So far eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives, all pro-Europeans, have quit their parties to join The Independent Group, now known as TIG for short.
TIG has not yet become a new political party but this is still a massive development.
In both cases the quitting MPs have openly expressed no confidence in their former party leadership. They no longer think it is possible that Mr Corbyn or Mrs May can head broad churches on…
