Brexit: should the public be asked again?
“Like Sinatra, Slim Shady and measles before him, Nigel Farage is back,” said Matthew d’ancona in The Guardian. In an article for The Daily Telegraph last week, the former UKIP leader announced that he was going back on the campaign trail under the banner of the Eurosceptic pressure group Leave Means Leave. He called the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan a “cowardly sell-out” and condemned those plotting to reverse the Brexit process. “The time has come to teach them a lesson – one that they will never forget,” he declared. Farage’s return to the fray – although in truth he never really went away – carries risks for Leavers. The core of their argument since the referendum has been that the voters have spoken and that there’s nothing more to discuss. But publicly restarting the campaign “will encourage the impression that the 2016 result is provisional” and that there is everything still to play for.
The reality is that all sides now recognise that Brexit isn’t inevitable, said Sean O’grady in The Independent. Boris Johnson has talked of saving Brexit; Julian Dunkerton, the co-founder of Superdry, has donated £1m to the People’s Vote campaign for a fresh referendum on the final deal with Brussels, noting that there is a “genuine chance to turn this around”. Parliament is locked in stalemate, while in the media, and in offices and pubs, people are already debating the pros and cons of Brexit as if we were going to have a second vote. So why not make it official? It may be the only way to settle this argument, “now that the facts and consequences [of Brexit] are incomparably better understood than they were in June 2016”.
It’s the only way to stop Brexit in a democratic manner, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. But whether it’s realistic is another matter. Referendums take time to ratify and organise: the bill for the 2016 vote was introduced 13 months before polling day. Given that Brexit is due to take place at the end of March next year (unless all 27 EU states agree to extend the Article 50 process), we’d probably only have “three months max” to arrange a vote on a final Brussels deal. The idea’s a non-starter, said Gordon Macintyre-kemp in The National (Glasgow). Quite apart from the fact that there’s no parliamentary majority for holding such a vote, it would entail a divisive, ugly campaign during which the PM would be denounced as a “traitor” and an “EU lackey”. Chances are, Leave would win again, providing just the opportunity Johnson and Farage need for a political comeback.