Donald Tusk: Chance of Brexit Being Cancelled Could be 30%

• 05.11.2019, 13:35
•  Europe,  World

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The chances of the UK staying in the EU are as high as 30% as the country would be likely to reject Brexit in a second referendum, the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, has said, The Guardian reports.

The bloc’s most senior official claimed the British public had only truly debated Brexit after the 2016 referendum and there was significant reason to believe the leave vote could be reversed.

Describing the decision by the former British prime minister, David Cameron, to call the vote as a political miscalculation, Tusk said he would expect a different result in a vote today given what had been learned about the consequences of leaving.

“The referendum was at the worst possible moment, it is the result of a wrong political calculation,” Tusk said in an interview with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza (GW) that was shared with the Guardian as part of the Europa collaboration of six European newspapers.

“A real debate about the consequences of Brexit wasn’t had during the referendum campaign, but only after the vote. Today the result would probably look different. Paradoxically, Brexit awoke in Great Britain a pro-European movement.”

Tusk, whose tenure as president of the European council, the EU body made up of the 28 leaders of member states, is due to end in November, said he had been moved by the anti-Brexit march in London earlier this year during which he was celebrated as a voice calling for the UK to reconsider.

While suggesting there was a “crisis in leadership” among remainers, in an echo of his previous claim that the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn is essentially pro-Brexit, Tusk said he still believed it was possible the question could again be put to the people.