It has all the makings of a great thriller novel about politics.A journalist gets a politician to admit there is a secret plan to launch a new political party and to fool the public into thinking it is different from a party which was previously defeated in a general election.To do this, the report said, some of the younger members should leave and form a new party. Then, later, they could join up with some of their older colleagues under a new name. In the meantime, some old stalwarts most closely identified with the old party should stay behind, so the “new new party” could seem genuinely different.Sound familiar? Isn’t that exactly how the One Bermuda Alliance came about? And does that mean it’s still the United Bermuda Party?That was the essence of the Progressive Labour Party’s press conference on Wednesday as it demanded the OBA release the “secret report”.So is this all a plot to fool Bermuda’s innocent voters?Well, not really. First, this “revelation” was made a year ago, and despite the Progressive Labour Party’s efforts to breathe new life into it, it was asked and answered then.Former United Bermuda Party leader Wayne Furbert, having joined the PLP, made it public. Interim OBA leader John Barritt agreed there had been a recommendation from a consultant. But he said the OBA was not following it.Given the rather shambolic way the the Bermuda Democratic Alliance came together with the departing UBP MPs, he said, this was hardly a smoothly-oiled plan.The truth is more prosaic.Three young UBP MPs did leave the UBP to form the BDA, which declared it was charting a new direction in Bermuda politics.At first, the BDA made some progress, attracting new support which had been either apolitical or was disillusioned with the PLP or the UBP. But it stumbled while the UBP, despite problems, showed some resilience.Finally, in 2011, the by-election for former Premier Dr Ewart Brown’s seat was fought. The PLP’s Marc Bean won, but this was really about second place. The UBP narrowly pushed the BDA into third, and the real lesson was that if the two parties went into a general election as they were, they would split the Opposition vote and both would be smashed by the PLP.And so MPs from both parties started talking and the OBA was formed. In practical terms, there was no secret plan; it was about self-preservation.In ideological terms, there was a recognition that the UBP as constituted could not win a n election. There had to be a change. this was hardly a controversial position.The second place where the conspiracy theory falls apart is in who was left behind.Mr Furbert claims that the people who were supposed to stay were Mr Barritt, former Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons, MP Louise Jackson and Trevor Moniz.But in fact it was leader Kim Swan and MP Charlie Swan, along with a few people like Erwin Adderley, who stayed behind not exactly the old white Establishment.Does the OBA have former Members of the UBP in it? Yes. Does it share some of the same policies? Yes. Does that mean it’s the same party? No, because it has policies that differ and many new members, candidates and a leader who would never have joined the UBP.Of course, the silliest part of this, aisde from the fact that nothing new has happened, is that all the PLP has to do to make the report public is to wheel out Wayne Furbert.Journalists rightly asked the PLP if they would be making their consultants’ reports public in the interests of transparency. The silence from Darius Tucker, the former UBP MP who has now been given the impossible task of trying to take Paget West for the PLP, suggests the answer to that question is no.Does any of this matter? Not really, because in the end, voters shoul;d choose the party they think can best lead Bermuda out of its current economic slump.And the energy being put into this suggests the PLP wants to do everything it can not to talk about that particular subject.