Expert on Reversing Referendums Says Brexit Can Also Be Stopped

(Bloomberg) -- Brexit could yet be reversed, according to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who himself once acted counter to a referendum result.

Tsipras told fellow leaders at a crunch summit in Brussels on Wednesday that if the U.K. Parliament doesn’t approve the withdrawal agreement in the next six weeks, it will be forced to hold European elections.

“This will be the greatest defeat of Brexiteers, and maybe even the beginning of the end for Brexit,” Tsipras said, according to a transcript of his intervention shared by diplomats familiar with the matter. He then asked them to consider whether the EU should back this possibility.

Tsipras knows a thing or two about annulling referendum results. He called a popular vote on a deal Greece was offered by its European partners in 2015 and campaigned against it. He won the plebiscite only to reverse course and accept the deal at an all-night summit in Brussels.

The difference is that in Greece’s case, the opposition lent its support to the deal, helping Tsipras overcome a mutiny by his backbenchers, who voted against it in Parliament. May has failed repeatedly to extract such support and when she was asked on Wednesday about her talks with the opposition, she was evasive and non-committal, according to two diplomats familiar with the discussion.

One thing in common between Greece and the U.K. is that in both cases there is a strong core of EU supporters, and Tsipras told EU leaders they can’t ignore the 6 million voters who signed a petition to revoke the Brexit referendum. Ironically, in Greece’s case, EU supporters in the referendum were mocked with a term which roughly translates as “remoaners.”

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.