Who Would Support It?

The Liberal Democrats are, so far, the only party to have made a second vote on Brexit a driving priority in their agenda. But with only 12 seats in Parliament, they are only a minor factor in the House of Commons, and the public shows few signs of rallying to their cause.

As things stand now, said Tony Travers, the director of LSE London, a research center at the London School of Economics, only “a minority of British politicians would like a second referendum.”

There are a couple of reasons for that, Mr. Travers said. Obviously, pro-Brexit lawmakers would vote against it, but so would many anti-Brexit ones who fear that a second victory for the “leave” side would shatter their hopes for a soft Brexit.

While “the majority of MPs supported the ‘remain’ camp during the referendum campaign,” their main objective now is to maintain access to the single market, Jolyon Maugham, a barrister and a prominent proponent of a second referendum, said in a phone interview.

However, if it begins to look as if Britain would be stuck with a hard Brexit deal or no deal whatsoever, then a larger share of lawmakers might support a second referendum, Mr. Featherstone added.

Is This the Only Way to Stop Brexit?

In March 2017, Britain became the first country to invoke Article 50, setting the exit process in motion. It is not clear that the process could be reversed, even if the British public voted in a second referendum to remain.

“As I see it, there are two routes to do this: a political and a legal one,” Mr. Maugham said. Britain would need all 27 remaining bloc member states to agree to its revocation of Article 50. But it would take only one of them to impose unacceptable conditions, or to say no, to block that route.