Both Labour and Conservative MPs are frustrated with their parties. So they're forming a new one.

(Image credit: Jack Taylor / Getty Images)

published 20 February 2019

Brexit isn't the only political crisis tearing the U.K.'s Parliament apart.

Three Conservative and eight Labour members of Parliament have left their parties in the past few days, and they have a surprisingly unified reason, BBC reports. All the defectors are fed up with Brexit proceedings and how their parties are being run, so they're coming together under a newly formed Independent Party.

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The leadership crisis has spanned both major parties, with seven Labour MPs first announcing their resignation from the party on Monday, CNN says. One defector, Luciana Berger, cited anti-Semitism within the party and said it had been "hijacked by the machine politics of the hard left." Joan Ryan, an eighth Labour defector, joined the new Independent Group on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, three Conservatives joined the Independents on account of "this government's disastrous handling of Brexit," they said in a letter to May.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.