“I did not make this decision lightly,” Robert King said as he quit the One Bermuda Alliance on August 31 and announced he will sit in the House of Assembly as an independent. He holds Smith’s North, Constituency 10.
King, who led the Opposition for six months, was removed as leader in February. In his statement he said he had spent the months since trying to reconcile differences and keep serving his constituents as an OBA MP. “But there comes a time when you have to be honest with yourself,” he said. “My values and the direction of the organisation are no longer aligned.”
He told The Royal Gazette the split was not personal. “It’s not about the relationships with the people in the One Bermuda Alliance,” he said. “It’s about where will we be most effective at meeting the needs of the community.”
As an independent he said he would be free to “support good ideas, challenge bad ones and work with anyone who is prepared to put Bermuda first”. He added: “I am not leaving politics. I am leaving the politics that has failed too many of our people.” He asked charities, churches, businesses and individuals to tell him what is not working, and called his move “an invitation” for people of goodwill to “chart a new course”.
From by-election to leader to the exit
King won the Smith’s North seat in a May 2024 by-election, after Michael Dunkley retired. He took 209 votes, ahead of Sir John Swan on 184 and the PLP’s Lindsay Simmons on 181. At the 2025 General Election he held it with 303 votes, almost 40 per cent, to Simmons’s 286.
On September 6, 2025, he beat Ben Smith for the OBA leadership after Jarion Richardson stepped down. By February, seven MPs had reportedly signed a letter of no confidence in him. Smith was sworn in as Opposition leader at Government House on February 5. Deputy leader Scott Pearman said MPs had voiced concerns about King’s leadership style and doubted he could unite the party.
King’s departure leaves the OBA with ten members in the Lower House, against 25 for the PLP. The island has had no independent MPs since before the 2017 General Election, when Shawn Crockwell and then Mark Pettingill resigned from the OBA.
