Don’t ask why Chuka ​Umunna joined the Lib Dems – ask how many will follow him

It is easy to laugh, but people say they want politicians to be honest, right up until they actually are

It was the attention to detail that did it. Most Photoshop efforts give themselves away pretty quickly. The lines are all jagged, the font’s not quite right, that sort of thing. But as Chuka Umunna stood there, behind that lectern that so clearly said the words “Liberal Democrats”, and in front of a large television that said the same, it really did look like the former Labour, former Independent Group, and now former Change UK MP for Streatham had joined the Liberal Democrats.

One person who was definitely taken in by it was the Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable. So much so that he even came out himself and gave a little speech, introducing his newest Liberal Democrat MP, Chuka Umunna. And this was when it got really weird. So realistic was it that even Chuka Umunna himself believed it was real, because suddenly he opened his mouth, his lips moved, and he started saying that he’d joined the Liberal Democrats.

It was a joke that had been allowed to get way out of hand, obviously. But he did have some serious points to make. When the wind-up first started, last night, that Umunna was joining the Liberal Democrats, some people hadn’t had to search very hard to dig out whole streams of relentless criticism of the Liberal Democrats, principally from his time as shadow business secretary, shadowing the then business secretary, Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable. And here he was, standing next to Vince Cable, having just joined his party. Well, that’s what it looked like anyway.

Special mention must go to Tory MP for Newquay, Steve Double however. Those looking for criticism of the Lib Dems aimed at them by their newest member did not have to look hard. So special credit to Double, who leapt straight past it all to find criticism that wasn’t there. “This has aged well,” he said, before sharing an old tweet of Chuka Umunna’s from 2014, where he claimed he would never bow to pressure from the Liberal Democrats to join their party, “and that’s a Chuka promise”.

It was dated 2014. Who are we to question Mr Double’s powers of political analysis, but quite why he imagines, in 2014, during the coalition years, Liberal Democrats might be thinking they could coax Chuka Umunna away from Ed Miliband’s Labour Party, is truly a mystery. Though one way to explain it might be that the only point in the last four years that I can recall anyone becoming aware of the existence of Steve Double is when, towards the end of the final debate on Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement in April, he announced it was “a turd”, “but it’s the only turd we’ve got”. What a statesman.

Anyway, it is easy to laugh. Many have done, and will continue to do. People say they want politicians to be honest, right up until they actually are. Then they get laughed at. Chuka Umunna said he hadn’t realised how hard it was going to be, setting up a new party. He also said he thought the centre ground in British politics needed a new party, that the Liberal Democrats weren’t it. And that he was wrong about that too.

The mad currents that have swirled under the Lib Dems for the last three years are quite possibly the most bizarre, most uninterpretable of all. When Theresa May called her snap election, senior Lib Dems privately briefed they thought they’d get 30 seats. That didn’t happen. The Lib Dem fightback didn’t happen. Lib Dems have since privately briefed that might have been because they spent the entire campaign talking about gay sex.

Millions have been left politically homeless. But now, for reasons that seem utterly undecipherable, the Lib Dems came second in the European elections and appear to be a brand new insurgency.

Chuka acknowledged that there is only space for one centrist offering in the centre ground, and that it can “only” be the Liberal Democrats. Earlier this week, Rory Stewart said that the psephologist Sir John Curtice had told him that British voters no longer looked like a bell curve, but were now a U-bend. Everyone has rushed to the extremes, and started to claim to speak for the people. This stampeding up both sides of the half-pipe has made life dangerous for anyone still in the centre. People are tumbling back in at high speed. Things have got messy.

We are led to believe Umunna is only the first of a few new Liberal Democrat recruits in the coming days. However circuitous his route to get there, however many laughs have been provided along the way, he is only one among dozens if not hundreds of MPs from the two main parties, who know that their party is not fit to govern, and bears precious little resemblance to the organisation they joined, and yet still represent.

The littlest political hobo appears to have found a home. The question is how many in the Commons, and the country, might follow.