Brexit voters are now changing their minds – let’s them give them a Final Say rather than a bad deal

The areas that were most pro-Brexit in the 2016 referendum are the ones displaying the biggest shift in support away from Leave. May should give them a a chance to vote again

The findings are important because they suggest that the shock referendum result two years ago can be understood primarily as an economically driven protest vote (Getty)

You might be forgiven for imagining that the Final Say referendum campaign had already started.

In stark contrast to her previous aversion to glad-handing the general public, Theresa May is launching the most ambitious national campaign of prime ministerial engagement since Tony Blair’s “masochism strategy” in the wake of the Iraq disaster in the 2005 election. If nothing else, it shows this prime minister’s desperation to go above the heads of MPs in the Commons and go direct to the people for a mandate. In which case, why not go the whole hog?

Though she is still not exactly “Ms Showbiz”, Ms May seems to be trying to enjoy herself. She’s been around the TV studios, weathered lengthy press conferences and been subjected to the general public on radio phone-ins. Unlike her performance in the 2017 snap election, or her ill-starred conference speech later that year, there have been no mishaps, no faux pas, no prankster P45s. Something has changed, you might say.

Perhaps emboldened, and with little to lose in truth, she is now said to be up for a TV debate with Jeremy Corbyn, as well as an Elton John-style final Brexit tour to get the country behind her – with trips to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all pencilled in. All that, of course, on top of the usual appearances in parliament and wary encounters around the cabinet table, the latest of which she survived without further major mishaps.

Still, Ms May will find ratifying her deal quite a challenge, and the most striking thing about the next few weeks is the astonishing degree of uncertainty that surrounds the possible outcomes. Anything from a minority Corbyn government being installed without a general election to the eventual (though tempestuous) approval of the deal and triumphant survival of Ms May are plausible outcomes. Like the nation’s anxious children wondering what Santa might bring, Christmas will deliver delight for some, surprises for many and disappointment for others.

Leaving aside the calculations, what has become increasingly clear – and should be made clear to Ms May during her political peregrinations – is that the national mood has shifted. As the latest academic analysis of polling data demonstrates, and as we report today, the areas that were most pro-Brexit in the 2016 referendum are the ones displaying the biggest shift in support away from Leave. The reasons are given as the reality of the economic damage that is about to be inflicted on the country, and, more unexpectedly, a more positive view of EU migration that has emerged during the past few years of national self-examination.

Ms May will be sending much of her time contrasting her “moderate” approach with the supposedly extremist hardline Brexiteers and Remoaners – but hers is not some idealised middle course. The deal that Ms May managed to extract from the Europeans is in fact itself a hard Brexit, and merely an exercise in damage limitation. As the Treasury forecasts due this week will show, it is also one that is inferior to the current arrangements.

Given all of that, and given the prime minister’s new taste for campaigning, the time has come for her to put her case directly to the people, allowing them an opportunity to approve it or reject it. It is an unarguable case, though there remain important questions about timing and the wording of the question.

It might be that Ms May’s vision of the future, imperfect as it is, does indeed represent the will of the people. What she cannot pretend is that it represents “the Brexit we voted for”, as the popular phrase goes, back in 2016. That is why Ms May needs a Final Say referendum just as much as the people of this country, who deserve to be heard. They are not tired, as Ms May suggests, of talking about Brexit so much as irritated about what has been happening, and anxious to be given the final right of consent. The movement for a Final Say is gathering momentum.