Opposition MP Trevor Moniz has urged reformers in the United Bermuda Party to push for change – even it results in a split.

He said the past three elections showed a new formula was needed to woo an entrenched electorate with very few floating voters and he said the UBP needed a Barack Obama figure to galvanise the electorate.

But he cautioned a new third party challenging an existing two-party system would go nowhere fast.

After the election, in which the UBP again took only 14 seats to the PLP's 22, the idea of forming a new party emerged, chiefly among a group of new UBP MPs.

Mr. Moniz told The Royal Gazette: "The freshman class of MPs is to be encouraged to try out approaches to appeal to new voters we haven't particularly been able to attract. The aim is always to decide who are the swing voters and reach them.

"It's incumbent upon us to be bold and brave and do that and if we are not that might result in a third party forming.

"If the UBP is too hidebound to try new approaches or let groups within it try new approaches then I think the likelihood of a split increases geometrically."

Mr. Moniz said the progressive wing included Wayne Furbert, Shawn Crockwell, Donte Hunt and Mark Pettingill.

"Obviously those people were prepared for a new approach and they were even talking about the possibility of a new party but to my mind a new party is down the road.

"What you should initially look at is a group who want to go out and do something and you let them do it.

He said parties around the world had groups within them to push agendas.

"I see no reason why the UBP shouldn't have within it a reform group aimed at a different approach."

Asked what he felt the new group stood for he said: "I think they feel they can appeal to a younger electorate and more to people who are swing voters, the younger black electorate better than the old UBP which is seen as more conservative. They may be right.

"I am encouraging them to go further. You haven't heard much from them lately, they were new in the House and they went through their first Throne Speech and Budget.

"I think part of that new group is Wayne Furbert himself. I have had meetings with them and I think there is merit in what they say."

He said Barack Obama had managed to motivate and inspire whole swathes of younger voters without saying anything new in the US Democrat primaries.

"I guess what people are saying is the UBP needs a Barack Obama to motivate and re-energise our base.

"To some extent on the PLP side Ewart Brown has done that in a positive and negative fashion with the black power salutes and all the nasty rhetoric and racist language but at the same time you have to admit they have been re-energised."

Asked if the UBP had a Barack Obama among its 14 MPs, Mr. Moniz said: "I think under the new lot I think the closest I have seen to it is Shawn Crockwell. I thought during the election he did extremely well as someone who was a relative neophyte to politics."

He said Mr. Crockwell had handled the chairmanship well after the resignation of Gwyneth Rawlins and had also taken on a difficult seat in the aftermath of the departure of Jamahl Simmons.

Mr. Moniz, who said he feels like 'the ballast' between the two wings of his party, admitted he had been meeting with the reform group.

"I think I can be a change agent within the UBP but there's no magic bullet."

He agreed the party was gridlocked with the reform group hoping the old guard would fade away but knowing its refusal to budge means any new party would be doomed if it tried to take on the PLP and the surviving UBP. That scenario could hand the PLP even more seats at a snap election.

But Mr. Moniz said there was still the chance of movement.

"What will happen is you will get a group which will have new ideas and new approaches and if they are smart they will try those new approaches and the old group has to decide whether to put up with those new approaches, adopt them or reject them.

"If they reject them you become a new party if they say we are kicking you guys out because you have gone your own way. The new group might adopt a policy that the others can't live with so you get a natural split.

"I don't think there is any point in having an artificial split. You have to have a split."