How the ‘people’s vote’ campaign gained momentum

A year ago, campaigners for a ‘people’s vote’ seemed an eccentric bunch of no hopers and bad losers. Mocked as ‘remoaners’, their arguments barely covered by the media, history had left them behind. As the leave campaigns’ central claim that we could have the benefits of EU membership while leaving the EU is revealed for the absurdity it always was, the ‘people’s vote’ has gathered mass support and moved from the fringes to the mainstream with heartening speed. One mark of the campaign’s success is that even its critics acknowledge that a ‘peoples vote’ is a viable solution to the constitutional, economic and diplomatic crisis that engulfs us. A second is that their deliberately loaded phrase ‘people’s vote’ has caught on to the despair of editors who vainly instruct reporters to find neutral alternatives. Here, with only a few comments from me, is how leading figures in the ‘people’s vote’ campaign believe they will carry their momentum forward and secure a second referendum.