At the height of Britain’s Brexit debate, passions ran so high that some talked of a “new English civil war”. That comparison still intrigues me for one specific reason: the side that won the civil war ultimately lost. King Charles I was executed in 1649. Eleven years later, the English decided they had made a mistake and restored the monarchy.
Could a similar reversal happen with Brexit? I think so.
Seven years after the 2016 referendum, and three years after Brexit actually happened, opinion has shifted markedly. As the academic Matthew Goodwin wrote recently, some 60 per cent of Britons now think Brexit was the wrong decision and would vote to rejoin the EU at a second referendum. An average of recent polls shows 58 per cent of voters not only regretting Brexit, but actively favouring Rejoin.