The truth about Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘Independent Alliance’

Jeremy Corbyn has teamed up with four other MPs elected as independents at the general election to form an ‘Independent Alliance’. This, the former Labour leader was quick to point out, makes the new group the joint-fifth largest in the Commons, sharing that accolade with Reform UK and the Democratic Unionist Party. But in the battle for attention in parliament, Corbyn and his colleagues are going to be disappointed.

Labour’s majority of nearly 180 means that Corbyn’s alliance won’t give Keir Starmer sleepless nights, even if the group has already reached out to the seven Labour MPs who were suspended from the parliamentary party for six months after voting in favour of a abolishing the two-child benefit cap.

The new group will not be entitled to any additional public funding, known as ‘Short money’: the Members’ Estimates Committee makes it clear that a group is only eligible for such funding if it has ‘at least two Members of the House who are members of the party and who were elected at the previous General Election after contesting it as candidates for the party’.