The Campaigners For A Second Brexit Referendum – Where Are They Now?
6 min read
The campaign for a second EU referendum, which heavily accented Brexit’s threat to young people’s futures, ended in abject failure. But Ben Gartside finds it did secure the futures of many of the youngsters involved
What do Andy Burnham, Robert Jenrick and Richard Hermer have in common? All have been helped by people who started their careers on the People’s Vote.
The campaign for a second referendum on EU membership failed but, a decade on, it is striking how many who worked on it have prospered.
Many worked at For Our Future’s Sake, a student-led strand of the wider, sprawling People’s Vote campaign.
Abby Tomlinson, who cut her teeth as a digital campaigner at the outfit, was part of Burnham’s Makerfield by-election machine after leaving Keir Starmer’s No 10.
Other alumni include Amanda Chetwynd-Cowieson, now a senior adviser to NHS England chief executive Sir James Mackey and who has been awarded a British Empire Medal; Jason Arthur, chief executive of Lewis Hamilton’s Mission 44 charity; and Richard Brooks, a special adviser to Attorney General Lord Hermer.
Another is Amatey Doku, a successful consultant with a side-hustle as a minor social media star. His Instagram page, Sticky Toffee Pudding Reviews, has amassed more than 100,000 followers.
Doku began reviewing sticky toffee puddings in January 2020, shortly after the landslide victory for the Conservatives at the 2019 election ended all hopes of the pro-EU movement in securing a second referendum. Before then, Doku was a regular in print and on TV screens, advocating the case for a second vote on the UK’s relationship with the EU.
It’s easy to see how Doku’s political campaigning nous translates to social media stardom – he is humorous, dry and charismatic in a way that keeps your attention whether discussing custard-to-pudding ratio or students’ rights to study abroad.
The campaign for a second vote was perhaps the best-funded in a generation: hundreds of activists, pollsters and spokespeople were contracted to advance the argument for another referendum.
Morgan Jones, author of No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second EU Referendum, which chronicled the failed campaign to keep the UK in the EU, tells The House: “The People’s Vote campaign was unusually well-funded by the standards of British political campaigns and provided a lot of entry-level positions for people starting out in politics.
“It also allowed them to rise quickly within quite a febrile and fast-paced campaign, which focused a lot on the importance of being seen to be supported by young people and therefore put young people at the front of a lot of demonstrations and stunts.”
The campaign also reinvigorated some older careers. Tom Baldwin, who had left frontline politics following Ed Miliband’s loss in the 2015 general election, returned via the People’s Vote campaign, where he served as director of communications. Alastair Campbell also returned to the public eye as a prominent campaigner. Both are still committed to the Rejoin cause but several of their former young charges have switched sides.
Sam Ashworth-Hayes began his life in politics as a blogger for InFacts, a pro-EU website run by former journalist Hugo Dixon. As part of his daily work, Ashworth-Hayes would write pieces detailing misleading statements by Leave-supporting politicians.
Now, Ashworth-Hayes finds himself in close quarters with many he blogged about as Reform’s senior policy adviser, following periods as a comment editor at the Telegraph and at the Henry Jackson Society.
In columns for the Telegraph, Ashworth-Hayes advocated a liberal approach for Reform UK – scrapping planning laws and reducing energy costs as much as possible – while simultaneously reducing immigration and the country’s benefits bill, and is a close ally of James Orr, Reform’s influential head of policy.
Ashworth-Hayes isn’t the only member of the second referendum campaign to eventually move to more Eurosceptic pastures.
Will Dry voted to leave the European Union as an 18-year-old, then found himself campaigning to have a second referendum as a disenfranchised Eurosceptic with Our Future Our Choice.
So many young people were given positions of power and responsibility
He became closely involved in a lot of the pro-EU movement’s stunts – seen within the campaign as a good way to ensure TV coverage and front-page pictures. In July 2018, Our Future Our Choice protested outside Chequers during a cabinet summit, unfurling a banner which read: “Your Brexit Deal Screws Our Future: Explain Yourselves”.
Within five years, Dry would be advising a Conservative prime minister leading many of the ministers he protested against in Chequers that day. A year later, he had resigned as a special adviser to Rishi Sunak and was leading the charge against him alongside Lord Frost. Today, Dry is an ally of Reform’s Robert Jenrick.
“The campaign attracted a lot of eager, motivated young people,” one former staffer says. “It gave you incredible access to politicians with really storied careers, but there wasn’t really an ideology driving the campaign, which is probably why you see some committed Eurosceptics today.”
Outside of a couple of notable outliers, one including Andrew Lewin, now Labour MP for Welwyn Hatfield, few members of the second referendum campaign have made their mark electorally. Far more have found success as advisers.
One former staffer says: “It was a successful platform for so many people because the People’s Vote campaign gave young people a lot of power and responsibility.
“While it was ultimately unsuccessful, in my view it was the best campaign anyone on the progressive left has fought in the last decade.
“It gave young people from diverse backgrounds a lot of opportunities – so it’s no wonder lots of those people have gone on to interesting and varied work.”
Ultimately, the campaign unravelled. The young pro-EU activists rowed in behind the embattled Baldwin and James McGrory, who had been threatened with sacking by campaign chairman Roland Rudd. The campaign subsequently imploded, and the electoral success of Boris Johnson put the demise of the movement in no doubt.
There is a dry irony that a campaign that failed to achieve its stated objective in securing the future for all young Britons has nevertheless succeeded in launching the careers of those who worked on it.
Few involved in the People’s Vote or its allies seem inclined to revive a Rejoin cause that is at a low ebb. One exception may be Jolyon Maugham, the founder of the Good Law Project, which brought a number of legal challenges to frustrate the attempts to leave the EU. Maugham has begun discussions about launching a new political party.
Maugham has told friends the party will model itself on noughties Ukip – explicitly rejoin, and try to move the Overton window on pro-European politics to bring about national change.
