Brexit Bulletin: The End of Remain

Days to General Election: 3

(Bloomberg) --

What’s Happening? With the U.K. election days away, things are looking bleak for the anti-Brexit lobby.

This week is the last chance to stop Brexit. It looks like a fight Remainers are poised to lose: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on track to win a governing majority in Thursday’s general election that would let him, in the words of his own campaign slogan, “get Brexit done.”

“This is the end of Remain,” said Anand Menon, director of the U.K. in a Changing Europe program based at King’s College, London. “Even if the Tories get a majority of one, then Brexit will happen.”

The failure comes despite the fact that that more voters now say they want to remain in the European Union than leave. Even those who have devoted their working lives full-time to efforts to overturn the result are depressed and angry at the way their side has failed to make headway.

What went wrong? Heading into this election campaign, pro-Remain figures couldn’t agree on a unified plan — whether simply to cancel Brexit, as the Liberal Democrats promised, or to put the question to voters again, as Labour is now pledging. And they failed to forge a functional cross-party alliance: The People’s Vote campaign for a second referendum splintered in October; there has been no pro-EU pact during the election campaign.

Meanwhile, Johnson, one of the faces of the Leave campaign before he became prime minister, has largely headed off the threat that Nigel Farage’s hard-liners would split the anti-EU vote. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has straddled the fence on Brexit. And a plethora of anti-Brexit  tactical voting websites don’t always agree on who is best to vote for.

The consequences will become clear on Friday morning.

Today’s Must-Reads

• Hastings, the English coastal resort that played host to Britain’s most famous battle, is now a down-at-heel town on the frontline of this election campaign, Bloomberg’s Jill Ward and Tiago Ramos Alfaro report.

• U.K. officials fear that new customs arrangements for Northern Ireland may not be ready by the end of 2020, when a transitional agreement with the EU is due to expire, the Financial Times reports.

• An “increasingly manic” Boris Johnson is peddling “ the big lie of this election” with his pledge that a Conservative government will “get Brexit done,” argues Simon Jenkins in the Guardian.

Campaign in Brief

On the Markets | The pound strengthened Monday to a fresh two-and-a-half year high against the euro, as opinion polls continued to point to a Conservative win. The latest poll, from ICM/Reuters, put the Tories on 42% and Labour on 36%, a narrower gap than several weekend surveys.

100 Days | Labour’s Treasury spokesman John McDonnell rejected the idea there would be a run on the pound or capital flight if his party wins Thursday’s election. He said any new Labour government would present a budget early in 2020 “which ends austerity once and for all.” 

Hospital Pass | Johnson faced questions after a four-year-old boy, Jack Williment-Barr, was photographed lying on a pile of clothes on a hospital floor because of a lack of beds. Shown the image on a TV reporter’s phone, Johnson seized the device and put it in his pocket. “I’ll study it later,” he said. He later gave back the phone and apologized for the ordeal the boy had suffered. Corbyn blamed the Tories for causing a crisis in the National Health Service.

YouTube Blitz | The Conservatives bought a large advertisement slot at the top of the YouTube website and mobile app — the second time in three days they have paid big money to dominate the video-streaming platform. YouTube expert Chris Stokel-Walker reckons the two ads will likely cost more than the £200,000 ($263,000) the party has spent on Facebook ads during the entire campaign to date. 

Switching Over? | Johnson questioned the future of the BBC license fee, the mandatory payment that funds the U.K.’s national broadcaster. “How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of TV channels?” Johnson said on a campaign stop in northeastern England. 

Stock Fears | U.K. retailers’ stocks are unlikely to sustain a bounce following this week’s parliamentary election, according to Morgan Stanley analysts, name-checking high street brands Dixons, Carphone Plc, Superdry Plc and Marks & Spencer Group Plc as among those with potential to disappoint investors. 

Billionaire Woe | The U.K.’s third-richest person could be squeezed whichever way the election result goes. The family fortune of Hugh Grosvenor, the duke of Westminster, is built on a property portfolio that could sag if a Tory government pushes Brexit through. On the other hand, Corbyn sees the 28-year-old duke as a “dodgy landlord” and plans to increase taxes on the super-rich.

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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adam Blenford at ablenford@bloomberg.net, Chris Kay

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