The great mistake of the Leave movement after the 2016 Referendum was expecting the other side to respect the result. It was an understandable error. We were all tired. We had prevailed over overwhelming odds and firepower. We had won. We live in a democracy. “Now it’s done, it’s done”, we thought – “this isn’t another country, where people who vote the wrong way just get made to vote again; there’s no need to keep campaigning”. So we folded our tents.



As I say, this was an understandable error – but hindsight shows that it was a harmful one. We let off scot-free those who had made such dire, alarmist threats before the vote about what would happen to our country if we dared to vote to leave the EU. The profound economic shock from the mere act of voting that way. The unemployment Brexpocalypse. The legions of companies fleeing the country. The Earth splitting in two and swallowing Britain whole. From institutions doing the business of the authorities of the day in cranking out such propaganda, to high profile individuals making the most luridly extraordinary claims and threats, the result of our belief that democracy would simply be honoured in the British way was that we effectively allowed the falsity of their claims to be cost free. Had we systematically logged them and thrown them back at their authors as they became demonstrably false over time, those authors might have been less inclined to make further such claims.



Moreover, we allowed the Continuity Remain campaign to suggest on an effectively unchallenged basis that the 2016 vote was all well and good, but now all the momentum in political life was in their direction. The many and varied calls for a second referendum on the basis that facts were clearer or that people had changed their minds or (heaven help them) that people had passed away were given more credence than they deserved (i.e. any) because we had downed tools. We allowed those advancing those claims to pretend to be defenders of democracy whilst they tried to stymie the result of the biggest vote about anything in our country. The so-called People’s Vote campaign was of course simply a device to let them get their way having lost the vote, which they couldn’t (and still can’t) accept – but its defeat was, if anything, rather lucky given our swift and unilateral transition to a peacetime footing, fools that we were to believe that our erstwhile opponents would demonstrate losers’ consent rather than preferring their own odd federalism over our democracy.



Of course, many of us still did our bit as individuals and shouted the odds when we could, participating (always as a minority voice rather than the majority our national vote had just shown us to be) in media discussions or invited (always to justify ourselves and explain why we might believe in sovereignty, unlike the other side) to participate in panel events. But this was ad hoc and reactive; we weren’t organised on a proper campaign footing for what, in reality, really needed a campaign – and certainly faced concerted campaigning on the other side (indeed, such was the passion and variety of campaigning from the other side that its very fractiousness was one of the things that probably saved us).



My fear is that we are about to make precisely the same mistake again.

Yes, we have left the EU. Just rejoice at that news. But now, the transition and negotiation. Those who are simply desperate to be right and see our country do badly, rather than preferring to be wrong and see us flourish, are hungrier for negativity than ever. They will be a willing and knowing drag anchor on every aspect of potential progress for our country as we negotiate our future relationship with the EU, keenly playing up every aspect of the other side’s case as strong, every word they speak as true, whilst systematically doing down our own economy and decrying everything the UK Government says as false. In due course they will make the case yet again for another referendum, or for a fudged sort of rejoining, or a declaration that we never really left in the first place – a prediction which may sound perverse, but one which surely the cash incinerating EU would seek to facilitate if at all possible. So it is simply vital that we continue to highlight the positive case for Brexit as we go through the negotiation process. Heaven knows the doom mongers will keep going, even in the face of all the good news we are seeing in our economy and in our country.



Those who have never accepted our vote to leave the EU don’t care about facts – but most people do. So I’m delighted that Global Vision now exists to give them to us.