Two of the biggest donors to the Brexit campaign say they now believe the project they championed would be abandoned by the government and the UK is to stay in the EU.
Peter Hargreaves, the billionaire who was the second-biggest donor to the 2016 leave campaign, and veteran hedge fund manager Crispin Odey told Reuters that they expect Britain to stay in the EU, despite their campaign victory in the 2016 referendum.
As a result, Odey, who runs hedge fund Odey Asset Management, said he is positioning for the pound to strengthen after his flagship fund reaped the benefit of betting against UK assets amid wider market fears about the effects of Brexit.
The donors’ pessimism comes amid deadlock in Britain’s parliament over the exit deal that British Prime Minister Theresa May has struck with the EU, which has cast significant uncertainty over how, or even if, Brexit will happen.
Hargreaves, who amassed his fortune from cofounding fund supermarket Hargreaves Lansdown, said that the political establishment was determined to scuttle Brexit and this would lead to a generation of distrust of Britain’s political classes.
The government is likely to ask for an extension to the formal exit process from the EU and then call for a second referendum, he said.
“I have totally given up. I am totally in despair. I don’t think Brexit will happen at all,” said Hargreaves, 72, who is one of Britain’s wealthiest men and donated ￡3.2 million (US$4.12 million) to the leave campaign.
Pro-Europeans “are banking on the fact that people are so fed up with it that they will just say: ‘Sod it we will stay.’ I do see that attitude. The problem is when something doesn’t happen for so long you feel less angry about it,” he added.
Turning Brexit upside down would mark one of the most extraordinary reversals in modern British history and the hurdles to another referendum remain high. Both major political parties are committed to leaving the EU in accordance with the 2016 referendum.
However, Odey, who donated more than ￡870,000 to pro-leave groups, said that while he did not believe a second referendum would take place, he did not think Brexit would happen either.
“My view is that it ain’t going to happen,” Odey said. “I just can’t see how it happens with that configuration of parliament.”
Britain’s parliament is viewed as largely pro-European because about three-quarters of lawmakers voted to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum.
Odey said he had changed his position on sterling over the past month and that the pound “looks like it could be quite strong” and rise to US$1.32 or US$1.35 against the US dollar, from about US$1.27.
Odey and Hargreaves said that one reason for their pessimism was a lack of direction from Brexiteers.
“The unfortunate thing is that almost nobody is leading the Brexit charge, so it’s leaderless, which is the problem,” Odey said.
He said he would be willing to donate to the leave cause in the event of another referendum, while Hargreaves said he was undecided.
Other prominent Brexit supporters who bankrolled the campaign were more optimistic about the project’s fate.
Paul Marshall, chairman of the hedge fund firm Marshall Wace, which runs US$39 billion in assets, told reporters that abandoning Brexit would be wrong and highly damaging.
“Despite the antics in parliament, the prospect of the 2016 referendum being overturned is in my view very small,” said Marshall, who gave ￡100,000 to the leave campaign.
The most likely outcomes are that Britain would leave the EU without a deal in March or the government would secure a revised Brexit deal, solving the thorny issue of the Northern Irish backstop, which might involve Brexit being briefly delayed, Marshall said.
Another vocal Brexiteer Tim Martin, chairman of British pub chain JD Wetherspoon who donated ￡212,000 to the 2016 campaign, said that he was refusing to contemplate a second vote.
He is touring his pubs giving talks to customers about the merits of leaving the EU without a deal and aims to have visited 100 of his sites by the end of this month.
A second referendum would be a “nightmare,” Martin said.
“It’s like saying: ‘Do you think we should have another world war?’ or ‘What do you think about being struck by lightning?’” he said.
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