A pro-Brexit news website founded by a key Vote Leave figure has decided to shut down by the end of January.
With another year of negotiations with the EU left to go, BrexitCentral’s editor-at-large Matthew Elliott said that he felt “basically its work will have been done” by the UK’s leaving date.
He told Politico’s London Playbook: “That is the Brexit point – that is the point at which we leave the political institutions of the EU, we cease to be a member of the EU, and it does move onto a different phase where it is all about a trade deal with the EU, but also trade deals with countries across the world, and that is a very different chapter in our history, so we felt at that point it is the right point to wind up operations.”
BrexitCentral bills itself as the “online home for all wanting to follow the twists and turns of our departure from the EU and hold the government to carrying out the instructions of the British public”.
Prior to working with BrexitCentral, Elliott was chief executive of Vote Leave and worked closely with Dominic Cummings.
He told the Playbook that he hadn’t realised it would take so long for the UK to leave the EU, blaming a lack of “vim and vigour” in Theresa May for not getting on with it.
“Looking back I think we have to put that down to the Tory leadership election immediately afterwards, and the branch of history we went down in electing Theresa May,” he said.
“I think fundamentally she saw Brexit as a problem she had to grapple with rather than an opportunity for the country, so she didn’t approach it with the same vim and vigour that we have seen Boris do in his first six months in office.”
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