Between 2016 and 2019, a unique coalition assembled within British politics. Combining Corbynite campaigners, Conservative Cabinet ministers, celebrities and grassroots activists, this disparate collection of forces was brought together by one aim: stopping Brexit. What began as the unfocused belief that Britain must not leave the European Union morphed into a mass movement: the People’s Vote campaign, a mess of organisations united by the call for a second referendum.

From the stunts of youth campaigners and the online antics of pro-EU influencers to the million-person marches of 2019 and the launch of new centrist parties, many tactics, serious and unserious alike, were used to try to secure a fresh vote. A campaign premised on telling the nation that they had got it catastrophically wrong was always going to be hard, and it was only made more so by parliamentary maths that never quite seemed to add up.

No Second Chances tells the dramatic, bizarre and at times embarrassing tale of the battle for a second referendum, the descent into infighting and the implosion of the People’s Vote campaign in full for the first time. Based on exclusive interviews with those on the front line, this is the sensational inside story of one of recent British history’s most feted roads not taken.

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Reviews

“A readable and very funny tour of a period that gave British politics PTSD.”

Jonn Elledge

“History may often be written by the victors, but this lively work of oral history shows us why we ought to study the losers too. Sometimes hilarious, occasionally horrifying – but always fascinating. Nobody is better at excavating the sealed tombs of progressive politics than Morgan Jones.”

Patrick Maguire

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