UKIP were, by and large, always a single issue party; leave the EU or at least have another referendum on the topic.
For many years, there was no referendum on leaving the EU on offer, so people settled for the next best thing, i.e. voting UKIP in the otherwise meaningless MEP elections every five years. Sooner or later, the message sank in and the UK government finally held a referendum in 2016.
A small but vocal minority of Remain voters (and the vast corporate interests which support them) is not happy with the outcome, so they want to re-run the referendum. Fair enough, they are just adopting the same tactic as UKIP/UKIP voters used to do, it's all part of the fun.
They also accuse Leave campaigners of running scared of a second referendum which might be true to some extent, now that the UK government has quite deliberately messed up Brexit and made it appear nigh impossible.
But are the hard-core Brexiteers really scared of a second referendum? At least they've had the nerve to treat the MEP elections as a quasi-second referendum by setting up the single-issue Brexit Party and fielding candidates.
The hard-core Remainers have missed the deadlines now, so we'll never find out, but if they were really sure that there was majority support for Remain, why didn't they just set up the single-issue Remain Party and field candidates against the Brexit Party? That looks like a fair fight to me and the outcome would have been most interesting.
Debate Magazine
