Former independent MP Stuart Hayward is in talks with emerging political group the All Bermuda Congress.

However disaffected Opposition MPs Jamahl Simmons and Maxwell Burgess have both ruled out joining the new grouping which hopes to unveil candidates for all 36 seats in March.

Organiser Khalid Wasi said the new party, which will campaign on rights for voters to force referendums and recall MPs, already has around 15-16 people interested in standing.

Mr. Hayward, who won a single term as an Independent MP in Pembroke from 1989-1993, said Mr. Wasi had some good ideas and Bermuda needed to ditch adversarial Westminster-style politics which set talented politicians against each other rather than having them work together.

“We don’t have the resources to split them up and pit them against each other.”

He said anyone picking the A team of Bermuda politicians would choose from both parties.

“The party system is almost artificial, it grew out of racial differences and a lot is egged on by racial differences now. I am not very interested in that at all.

“There is far more at stake than race or even ideology.

“No matter what a person’s ideology we all want to survive, not live in a place that is dangerous or out of our price range. So these are issues I share with Khalid and support.”

Mr. Wasi, wants to break the mould of racial politics, but his strategy rests on supporters of the United Bermuda Party realising its days are numbered and the All Bermuda Congress (ABC) is needed to replace it.

He said if the UBP didn’t fold the anti-PLP vote would fracture and the Government could pick up as many as 28 seats.

“Our strategy is about getting an unassailable majority. My advice to these guys is to consider the consequences of not folding.

“A lot of their support is just posturing. That will cave in very shortly.”

However UBP veteran Maxwell Burgess, who has recently been very critical of his own party and has even mooted the need for an alternative, said he wasn’t interested in the ABC.

He said: “At this point I am heading for retirement.”

And Jamahl Simmons, whose spectacular resignation kicked off a long round of recriminations in the United Bermuda Party, said he would not be joining the new party.

“I have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.”