Gina Miller delivers a surprise at her True & Fair Party launch

Gina Miller launched her True & Fair Party at the QEII Centre, a stone’s throw from Parliament today – and the lobby hacks who attended were in for a shock.

Hers isn’t a Remain or Rejoin party – as had been widely anticipated – but a movement pushing for a written constitution and proper enforceable rules and regulations about how MPs should conduct themselves and public money is spent. She was setting out, too, to fix what she called ‘a manifestly unfair voting system.’

The woman who defeated the governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson in the courts to uphold parliamentary sovereignty did, however, ‘dare’ – as she put it – to mention the word ‘Brexit.’

‘The Office for Budget Responsibility said that Brexit is on course to cause a 4 – 5% reduction in the size of Britain’s economy over the long-term,’ she said. ‘In more reasoned times, governments everywhere would leap on a policy that would raise GDP by 5%.’

She produced exclusive polling from Savanta ComRes showing 71% of the people polled support a legally-binding ‘oath of office’ for MPs.

The polling showed, too, 66% would be willing to consider voting for a new party. Asked if they’d be more likely to vote if there were a more proportional voting system in place, 49% said yes.

She quipped that when people talked about the ‘status quo’ in the country, she assumed that was Latin for ‘the mess we’re in.’

Miller felt Labour, as well as the Conservative Party, were not taking constitutional and electoral reform seriously as it was in neither of their interests to do so as the current system suited them.

Asked in a question and answer session with journalists afterwards why her start-up party would cut through when others failed, she said: ‘This is a different time. The public have an appetite for a new party now.

‘Whatever people say about me – and they’ve said a few things over the years – I get results,’ she said.