No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum

Join Mile End Institute to celebrate the publication of Morgan Jones’s new book about the campaign for a second EU referendum and its impact

Join us at the Mile End Institute to celebrate Morgan Jones’s new book No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum.

We bring together academics, campaigners, journalists and the author herself to explore the campaign for a second referendum after 2016, the ‘People’s Vote’ movement and the massive demonstrations of 2018-2019. Matthew Holehouse (The Economist), Emily Robinson (The Politics of Feeling in Brexit Britain) and Michael Chessum (This Is Only The Beginning: The Making of a New Left) will join Morgan Jones to ask how and why these campaigns tried to stop Brexit, why they were unsuccessful, and what lessons might be learned for the future.

This event will be held at Queen Mary's Mile End campus. The venue will be announced the week before the event.

Speakers

Morgan Jones is author of No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum (Biteback, 2026). She is co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, a contributing writer for the New Statesman, and has published in outlets including Labour List, Bloomberg, Prospect, Jacobin, The House magazine, OpenDemocracy, The Observer and Political Quarterly. She studied History at Queen Mary University of London.

Matthew Holehouse is Public Policy Editor and British Politics Correspondent at The Economist. He was previously Brussels Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and UK-EU Correspondent for MLex Market Insight.

Michael Chessum is a campaigner and journalist based in London. He has been active in the Labour Party, Momentum and the Green Party, and was a national organizer for Another Europe is Possible. He is the author of This Is Only The Beginning: The Making of a New Left, From Anti-Austerity to the Fall of Corbyn.

Emily Robinson is Professor of British Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of The Language of Progressive Politics in Modern Britain and co-author (with Jake Watts) of The Politics of Feeling in Brexit Britain. She is a former editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy.

Robert Saunders (chair) is Reader in British History at Queen Mary University of London. He has published widely on the history of Brexit and is the author of Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain.