No Second Chances

Between 2016 and 2019, a unique coalition assembled within British politics. Combining Corbynite campaigners and Conservative Cabinet ministers, celebrities and grassroots activists, seasoned political veterans and novice political amateurs, this disparate assemblage of forces was brought together by one aim: stopping Brexit. What began as the unfocused, often deeply emotional belief that Britain must not leave the EU morphed, fleetingly, into a mass movement: the People’s Vote campaign, a mess of organisations united by the call for a second referendum on Europe.

From the stunts of youth campaigners and the online antics of new pro-EU influencers to the million-person marches of 2019 and the launch of new centrist parties, many people, serious and unserious alike, dedicated themselves to securing a new vote. A campaign premised on telling the nation that they had gotten it catastrophically wrong was always going to be hard, and it was only made more so by parliamentary maths that never seemed to quite add up. Based on interviews with the people who were there, No Second Chances tells the dramatic, bizarre, and (at times) embarrassing story of one of recent British history’s most feted roads not taken.