Nigel Farage — the man many say is responsible for the UK’s decision to leave the European Union — has said he is warming to the idea of holding a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the bloc.
Farage is confident another vote would see people vote to leave again and end the debate.
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The UK’s shock referendum result in June 2016 saw the vote split 52 per cent in favour of leaving the trading bloc, with 48 percent in favour of remaining.
Farage said that political leaders from former prime minister Tony Blair, Lord Adonis, and former leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg would “never, ever, ever” stop fighting the vote to leave and the best way to draw a line under the issue could be a second public vote.
He said:
They will go on whingeing and whining and moaning all the way through this process.
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By GlobalData
EXCLUSIVE – Nigel Farage says "just maybe I’m reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum on EU membership".@Nigel_Farage | @Matthew_Wright | #wrightstuff pic.twitter.com/T0fROToskr
— The Wright Stuff (@5WrightStuff) January 11, 2018
Last month the former Labour minister Andrew Adonis has said Brexit has caused a “nervous breakdown” in Whitehall after he resigned as chair of the government-backed National Infrastructure Commission.
He added there should be a second referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal and that people like him who are in leadership positions should be “arguing passionately with the British people as to why staying in the EU is the right thing to do”.
Meanwhile, Blair has said he is trying to reverse Brexit, arguing that voters deserve a second referendum because the “£350m per week for the NHS” promise has now been exposed as untrue.
Do people want a second Brexit referendum?
In December a poll found half of people in the UK want a public vote on the final Brexit deal with the EU once the negotiations are over.
Of the 1,003 people surveyed in the Survation poll, 497, or 50 percent, said they would “support holding a referendum asking the public if they will accept or reject the deal”.
This is different from an entirely new poll on EU membership, however.
In April, a YouGov poll found that, for the first time since the referendum, more British voters believe that the decision to leave the EU was a mistake than were behind Brexit.
While 45 percent of those surveyed said that the split was the wrong decision, those in support numbered only 43 percent.
The remaining 12 percent were undecided.
What are the official lines?
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has failed to rule out a second EU referendum if he becomes prime minister. The Labour leader said his party was “not advocating” another vote on EU membership, but stopped short of ruling it out altogether.
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has meanwhile said the case for a second referendum on Brexit may become “irresistible” amid concerns over the direction of current negotiations.
Sturgeon said that not leaving the EU would be better than the UK crashing out of the bloc with no deal as she confirmed that the Scottish Government will later this month publish fresh analysis examining the impact of different Brexit outcomes on the economy.
However, Sturgeon insisted the SNP is not campaigning for a second EU vote.
