The plot to stop Brexit

Every Wednesday morning in the House of Commons, about a dozen people can be seen making their way along the committee-room corridor to attend a ‘grassroots co-ordination committee meeting’. Before they get down to business, the group, a mix of MPs and campaigners, are treated to a monologue from their meeting chair, Labour’s Chuka Umunna. This speech varies but the agenda is the same: how to bring about a second referendum and stop Brexit.

The ‘Stop Brexit’ campaign has taken many forms since the referendum result two years ago. There have been legal challenges, a surge of anti-Brexit campaign groups and plans for a new party — not to mention the one-man nationwide tour from Lord Adonis. He didn’t say that much on Europe before the referendum. Now, however, for him, as for so many others, passion for the cause arrived only after defeat. Cash is flooding in to the various campaigns, unregulated by any election watchdog.

At first, Brexiteers watched their antics with a kind of schadenfreude: look at the sore losers. But now things are getting a little more serious. A second referendum might be unthinkable, but wasn’t the same once said about Brexit itself?

The efforts, so far, have been fairly disorganised due to a reluctance among the various anti-Brexit groups to work together. ‘It’s all been a bit People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front,’ one organiser explains. ‘Each group thinks they know a bit more and there’s also the fact that some people are more into promoting themselves.’ Talk of a new centrist pro-Europe party organised by Simon Franks, the founder of LoveFilm, has left many lukewarm. ‘They say he’s got £50 million behind it. I’d be surprised if it’s even £5,000,’ snipes a rival centrist.

One cause most Remain activists can unite around has been found in the so-called ‘People’s Vote’.