His aim was to bring about the demise of Premier Ewart Brown, but Kim Swan's motion of no confidence in Dr. Brown's Government ended up doing more damage to himself than he could have ever imagined.

For six UBP politicians tired of calling in vain for radical change in a party which slumped to its third consecutive General Election defeat in 2007, the United Bermuda Party's dismal showing in the early hours of June 20 was the straw that broke the camel's back.

And Shawn Crockwell, Donte Hunt, Mark Pettingill, Sen. Michael Fahy, Sean Pitcher and Wayne Scott argue the UBP is an ageing camel which has been buckling under the strain for some time.

For a year and a half, that group had been repeatedly urging their party to rebrand and reform: to ditch the old image they said condemned it to perpetual failure and create a new one offering a desperately needed alternative to a Government led by a Premier unpopular with many of his own colleagues and achieving record low ratings in the polls.

But when Dr. Brown instigated widespread outrage by bringing four Guantánamo Bay refugees to Bermuda without permission from the UK or consultation with his Cabinet colleagues, even the UBP's most pessimistic members spied a chink of light.

As hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the House of Assembly on Friday, June 19, to register their anger at Dr. Brown's leadership style, inside the House Mr. Swan kicked off a 14-hour debate on a motion of no confidence in his Government.

However, an evening he hoped would lead to the deposing of the controversial Premier turned out instead to be a night of major embarrassment for the UBP as the motion crashed spectacularly.

One by one, PLP MPs from the front and back benches stood to lambast the Premier for his actions. Yet one by one at the end of the debate they voted in Dr. Brown's favour. Humiliation was heaped on top of the UBP as Opposition MPs Darius Tucker and Mr. Pettingill both refused to back the motion.

Many PLP members said the wording of the motion: "That this House has no confidence in the Government led by Premier Ewart Brown," meant that a vote against the Premier was also a vote against their own party, something they refused to do.

Yet UBP members claim the motion had ironically been worded by PLP rebels who approached the Opposition leader promising support from up to six backbenchers.

Mr. Swan, they say, insisted on taking care of negotiations himself, with experienced UBP lawyers forced to take a back seat and watch as the PLP backing visibly waned in the run-up to the debate before disappearing altogether when it came to the crunch at 4 a.m.

That evening was the moment the rebels decided their energy spent trying to win support for reform would be better spent starting a new party of their own.

It's not as if the UBP's old guard can say they haven't been warned, with the failed motion just one of a succession of blows since the morale-sapping election defeat shortly before Christmas 2007, when the party failed to gain any extra seats and leader Michael Dunkley lost his place in the House.

Mr. Swan, according to the defectors, was elected as Mr. Dunkley's replacement almost by accident — putting his name forward only out of protocol so that the obvious choice John Barritt wouldn't be elected in a one-horse race, yet being left in the hotseat when Mr. Barritt pulled out of the running.

Reformers believed the election result, coming on the back of a high-profile exodus from the likes of MPs Jamahl Simmons and Maxwell Burgess and chairwoman Gwyneth Rawlins — each of whom publicly blasted the UBP as they departed — showed something serious needed to be done.

They said even a change of name to distance themselves from the party the PLP spin machine had pigeonholed as a group of white elitists and black puppets may have been enough to win an extra ten percent of votes.

Older members argued the name should stay because of the positive connotations of the words "United" and "Bermuda". The older members got their way.

The reformers, who made up roughly half the parliamentary group, saw a chance to install a like-minded individual and edge in front when traditionalist Jon Brunson forced a by-election by resigning his seat one year ago.

So when non-reformer Charlie Swan was picked as Mr. Brunson's replacement, change-pusher Wayne Furbert went to this newspaper slamming it as a backward step and quit a month later.

The defectors say 2009 has been a story of missed opportunities, with poll results showing the UBP continue to lose ground on the PLP despite almost non-stop criticism of Dr. Brown from the public and supporters and MPs of his own party.

Dr. Brown's popularity reached rock bottom in the latest Royal Gazette polls at the end of June, when 27 percent of people said they were in favour of him: the lowest score by a Premier since this paper began its surveys in 2004.

Yet that same poll, carried out at the height of public dismay over Dr. Brown's Uighurs move, showed Mr. Swan's favourability had fallen as low as 30 percent on the back of his failed no confidence motion.

Meanwhile the PLP now had support from 43 percent of the voters, compared to 35 percent for the UBP; a few weeks earlier the score had been a tight 40-37. And the poll also showed just 12 percent of people said they approved of the UBP's performance since December 2007.

The new party is likely to have a number of hurdles to jump over in its early infancy — one of which could see the project wiped right out before it's got off the ground.

Dr. Brown could attempt to capitalise on any Opposition split by copying UBP Premier Sir John Swan's move shortly after the NLP formed 25 years ago. Sir John famously called a snap election at which the PLP was only able to field 30 candidates, lost seven seats and saw its share of the votes drop to 31 percent, a setback the PLP took years to recover from.

Some observers say it would be madness for Dr. Brown to try such a move with his own favourability so low — but the Premier may also consider it an opportunity to rescue his plummeting popularity in the House by pushing Brownites as candidates in branches currently occupied by his fiercest critics.

And while many calls have been made for a new party to give the disillusioned masses something new to vote for, no third party has been able to outmuscle the PLP and UBP before, with Khalid Wasi's 24 votes as a third candidate at the Charlie Swan by-election a clear signal that a third party would have a hell of a task on its hands.

Mr. Wasi's All Bermuda Congress formed before the 2007 election but didn't field any candidates before capsizing, while the National Liberal Party, formed by four expelled PLP MPs in 1984, collapsed without ever emerging as a real contender for power.

But former NLP leader Charles Jeffers says there is a better climate for a third party today, and believes the NLP failed chiefly because voters wanted to give the PLP a chance, a grace the ruling party no longer enjoys.

A party emerging from the Opposition's ashes further runs the risk of being painted the "new UBP" by a PLP spin machine which has categorised the UBP as an elitist white party with a few black "puppets" at its forefront.

According to the defectors, their backing from blacks and the Portuguese community outweighs any reliance on traditional UBP-backing Anglo-whites, making it highly unlikely for them to be dubbed a modern day version of the Forty Thieves.

And it might not be so easy for people to label the new group the UBP in disguise when, in the likes of Grant Gibbons, Mr. Barritt and Trevor Moniz, the real UBP is still soldiering on for all to see.