The Independent Group website stops working as soon as it is launched

Visitors are just greeted by a blank white page

The website run by former Labour MPs who have resigned from the party has completely broken just moments after it was announced.

The politicians, calling themselves The Independent Group, established a new website as part of a plan to split from the Labour Party that was announced at a press conference this morning. The website was referenced on a podium that the MPs stood in front of as they made the announcement.

But while the launch was still happening, the website stopped working. Instead of showing the planned messages about politics being broken, the website was simply entirely broken.

Some users reported seeing messages referencing 503 errors, which suggest the website's servers have broken. Others saw blank screens or long lines of code.

The website is apparently unable to withstand the interest among those viewing it, though it is unclear whether that is because there are high numbers of people attempting to access it or if it has been poorly built.

The Independent Group's Twitter feed, which went public at the same time as the announcement, continued to link out to the group's website even as the site was not working at all. The tweets made repeated references to "broken politics" but no mention of the broken website it was linking out to.

The rebel MPs also made reference to the website during the speech, encouraging interested people to visit it to understand more about the group.

Before it stopped working, the website included a statement that attempted to make clear why the group of MPs had quit, which it described as "statement and values of the Independent Group of MPs, who have resigned from their traditional Westminster parties to seek an alternative to Britain's broken politics".

It also included options to sign up to support the group, as well as a host of messages explaining why the schism had happened and who was involved.

It is not clear who is running the website or how it was set up, as the records that are usually stored as part of the registration have been hidden. Websites are able to include information about who will be responsible for their administration as part of the "WHOIS" registration they make when they are bought, but The Independent Group opted to redact all of that information.

But filings show that the domain was bought through a company called "Namecheap" on 10 February, and that the site was updated five days later.