It’s always good to be an independent thinker, right? You can make up your own mind rather than follow the fashion. You trust the facts more than the dogmas or the vogue. You think sensibly, around corners. You call out emperors with no clothes, and warn against the folly of the crowd.

Well, maybe. But when it comes to politics, being an independent is more complicated in practice. In particular, it depends on the circumstances and the political system. To be an independent is very important in times deadened by orthodoxy. It matters just as much in times of polarisation, when those in the middle struggle to have a voice. But when something big is at stake, the independent reflex can seem a bit precious, or worse. So, how does all this apply in 2023?

For much of my lifetime, to be independent has been an identity to be sought, to be admired, even to be treated as a sign of virtue. “It is. Are you?” was the canny slogan that launched the Independent newspaper in the 1980s. It invited prospective readers – and journalists – to escape the dogmas of both left and right. Many answered the call. It was not hard to see why. Reason was losing out to ideology back then. The 1980s were tough times, not least in journalism.

In politics, independents have more tangled roots. Not all of those who are described as political independents are virtuous free thinkers. Far from it. Paraphrasing Malvolio, you could say of independents that some are born independent, some become independent, and many have a form of independence thrust unwillingly upon them.

Independents remain common in local politics. In the 1970s, around 20% of England’s local councillors described themselves in this way. Today there is another revival, with local independents controlling district councils in places such as Ashfield in Nottinghamshire and Boston in Lincolnshire, and other independents having shared power at county level, including in Cornwall and Herefordshire.

At parliamentary level, though, the combination of the first-past-the-post system and the dominance of the national party campaigns ensures that elected independents are rarer than osprey chicks. The former BBC journalist Martin Bell famously won a House of Commons seat as an independent anti-sleaze candidate in 1997 for Tatton, in Cheshire, but sat for only a term and had no colleagues. The Kidderminster local hospital campaigner Dr Richard Taylor won a seat in 2001, but since he was defeated in 2010, there has been no true independent in parliament.

So even political nerds may be surprised to learn that there are 15 MPs apparently sitting as independents in the House of Commons – the same total of MPs as the Liberal Democrats. Until last week, indeed, there were 16 of these so-called independents, before Margaret Ferrier was ousted by the recall petition in her Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency.

The remaining 15 are nominally independents. But it is completely the wrong word for them. They have nothing in common with an independent like Taylor. All are party MPs who have subsequently lost their party whip, in several cases because of sexual harassment or bullying accusations. Their parent parties want rid of them. They go to great lengths to disown them. The 15 are better described as unattached MPs than as independents.

There are famous names among them, such as Jeremy Corbyn, suspended from Labour in the wake of the EHRC report into antisemitism in the party, and Matt Hancock, who lost the Conservative whip after agreeing to appear on I’m a Celebrity. In reality, though, they are a random mix of elected former Conservative, Labour, Plaid Cymru and Scottish National party MPs. None have broken by choice with the party they stood for. All of them, one suspects, would rejoin their original party tomorrow if offered the chance. That won’t happen in any of their cases. All 15 are serving out time in the parliamentary sin-bin as independents until the general election comes.

As this suggests, the history of independents in British politics is more jumbled and far less effective than the romanticised image of the independent as a principled loner against the system implies. Very occasionally, independent MPs have come to glory. Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan had periods as independents (a brief one in Churchill’s case, much longer in Macmillan’s, from 1936 to 1937), but became prime ministers in the end. Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot survived similar spells to found the NHS and lead the Labour party respectively.

But the list of those who have described themselves or who have sat as independents is equally rich in frauds, failures and fools, too. Oswald Mosley, Horatio Bottomley and John Stonehouse were all parliamentary independents at various times. All three ended up behind bars. If Rishi Sunak had the guts to remove the Conservative whip from Nadine Dorries, then doubtless she would then be classed as an independent, too.

True independents – those whose independent politics is voluntary rather than enforced – are different. By definition, independents of this type tend not to be members of parties. They would not be truly independent if they were. The system is stacked against them.

Nevertheless, some party MPs become so well known for their free thinking that they are treated as honorary independents. Frank Field enjoyed a reputation of this kind as a Labour MP from 1979 to 2018. Chris Bryant, chair of parliament’s standards committee, is perhaps his closest Labour successor. Among recent Tories, Sarah Wollaston and David Davis also stand out for similar reasons, though their politics are very different and Wollaston is now a Lib Dem.

In the end, to have an independent mind is always advisable, especially for journalists. But the hardheaded conclusion in modern conditions is that even independent-minded party MPs remain stranded on the margins. The prospect of enduring success is depressingly limited.

The polarised Thatcher years were certainly one of these opportunities to do things differently. But the realignment of the 1980s ended up in the modest rise of the Lib Dems rather than the triumph of the centre. The sleaze of the 1990s was another chance. It produced Bell’s win but little else – indeed, the MPs expenses scandal was still to come. Brexit was a third, deeply polarising as well as crudely populist opportunity, but Corbyn’s Labour lacked the will and trust to make good use of it. Even so, all the efforts to create a third force out of the cauldron of 2016-19 failed.

Today, rather as in 1997, we have inexorably reverted to a choice between the two large established parties, albeit under leaders who are determined to be less polarising than their predecessors. First past the post is stacked against smaller parties, just as it is stacked against independents. Today’s parliamentary independents are not beacons of a new politics but the detritus of the old. The dream of a more independent-minded and rational politics continues, but the prospect remains as elusive as it was in the past.