I'm John Bachelors with my colleague Joseph Sternberg, member of the

editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, he writes political economics.

He's based in London, he lives in London. Most recently he

wrote about the budget presentation by the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. Now we turn

to defection, betrayal, double cross, bolting.

A man named Anderson has announced the departure from the Conservative Party.

This is understood not as high-fiving and joy, but in fact a breaking up of the party if I understand correctly, but I do get lost.

Joe is what's happening with these defections to something that's unnamed, the independent group. I don't know what,

Change UK, the independent group, which seems like nobody's idea of a selling

slogan, but all of this, is this a consequence of the Tories exhausted and

everybody's looking out for him or herself? Is that what I'm witnessing in these

excited columns? I think there is definitely an element of that. I mean it's

interesting to note that this big defection to a new party reform UK seems to have

been prompted at its core by a debate about immigration policy and

you know sort of the conviction of you know certain voters or politicians the Conservative Party is not doing enough

to control illegal immigration in particular and so I think that you know what's

happening now is that there is a sense that the party is going to lose the next election.

And the issue is, does a politician want to go down with it or do they want to take some bold step up to or including potentially defecting

from the Conservative Party to try to prove to their own voters that this politician really

is serious about the issues that matter to these voters even if

those voters are concerned that the Tory party is not serious.

And Anderson's defection seems to have upset, well defection's too strong a word.

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