How the EU referendum result changed the Westminster village

The UK's vote to leave the EU referendum caught the Westminster set out. Pundits and pollsters had predicted a Remain victory, with warnings about the economy – otherwise known as 'Project Fear' – expected to get David Cameron over the line once again. It didn't go to plan.

Vote Leave's relentless "Take Back Control" slogan had caught on and the issue of immigration had dominated the campaign.

Chief Brexit cheerleader Boris Johnson joined Ukip in backing an Australian-style visa system, with Cameron's continual failure to meet his "tens of thousands" net migration target being raised time and again.

Stronger in Europe failed to counter the anti-immigration message and it was check-mate on the 23 June for the Leave campaign.

The EU referendum battle now over, a set of new groups have popped up across the Westminster village.

Open Britain

The unsuccessful Stronger In campaign, led by Labour's Will Straw, has been rebranded. Open Britain plans to "tackle the many unanswered questions" about the UK's future relationship with the EU. It inherits Stronger In's social media accounts and its 500,000 supporters.

The organisation is headed up by James McGrory, who spun for the Liberal Democrats and Stronger In, and Joe Carberry, a former adviser to David Miliband and member of Labour's rebuttal and attack team – the so called 'Seal Team' – in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

Carberry is also the godson of Lord Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary and co-architect of New Labour.

Former Conservative minister Anna Soubry said the group will campaign to "will marry a commitment to Britain's membership of the Single Market with making a positive case about the benefits of immigration".

But it seems the group has dropped Stronger In's support for free movement of people. "The strength of feeling is clear. Free movement of people cannot continue as it has done. It has to be reformed," Soubry, Labour's Pat McFadden and the Liberal Democrat's Norman Lamb told the Sunday Times.

Vote Leave Watch

Led by former Labour's former shadow business secretary and Remain campaigner Chuka Umunna, Vote Leave Watch plans to hold pro-Brexit campaigners to account over their "overblown and misleading" claims and commitments during the referendum campaign.

Vote Leave's widely contested £350m figure of how much the UK sends to the EU weekly comes to mind, with the campaign suggesting the money should be spent on the NHS. But the group may have difficulty attacking the government since Theresa May, a Remain campaign, is now in charge.

Like Open Britain, Umunna is a support of reforms around immigration. "I genuinely do believe that you cannot have the free movement of people in the same way as the EU was created, where you had six nations with not too similar economies," he said in February.

Save the Single Market Campaign

Splits are begging to emerge between Remain campaigners. The Save the Single Market campaign, founded by 89Up's Mike Harris, shares similar goals to Open Britain. But, crucially, it supports free movement of people.

"We put it together quickly with volunteers as we wanted a place where we could unite both leave and remain supporters behind a common goal," Harris told IBTimes UK. "There is now no point in going over the referendum so we need to exit the EU but at the same time much of what the leavers is pushing is impractical and would harm the UK.

"What we're doing is trying to be a sense check and unite the majority of both leave and remain voters around strong economic links to the EU."

More United UK

Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Paddy Ashdown launched More United in July. The grandee said the group's name was inspired by the maiden speech of late Labour MP Jo Cox.

The organisation plans to use crowd-funding to help finance candidates across the party divide so long as they support a set of "fundamental beliefs", including an "open and tolerant society where diversity is celebrated in all its forms".

Businesswoman Martha Lane Fox and Historians Dan Snow and Simon Schama are just three of the famous faces supporting the self-styled "political start-up", which has already attracted the support of 25,000 people.

The New European

The Brexit vote also opened up new opportunities for the UK's media, with regional publisher Archant launching The New European in July.

With the weekly targeting the 48% of the electorate or 16 million people who voted Remain at the referendum, the publication has drawn comparison to The National, a pro-independence newspaper set up after the 2014 referendum in Scotland.

Editor Matt Kelly, who previously worked at The Daily Mirror, said at the launch: "We are currently in an extraordinary period of time in the UK, with all of society seemingly in a state of flux and turmoil.

The first edition of the anti-Brexit paper reportedly sold 40,000 copies.

BrexitCentral

The New European will soon have an online rival. BrexitCentral will be digitally pouring over the EU referendum fallout. The website, which is due to launch in September, is the brainchild of Matthew Elliot, the lobbying supremo behind Vote Leave, Big Brother Watch, Business for Britain and The Taxpayers' Alliance.

Jonathan Isaby is stepping down as the TaxPayers' Alliance chief executive and returning to his journalist routes to edit BrexitCentral.

The website will be a "one-stop shop for news, analysis, comment and insight about the single biggest issue dominating the new prime minister's in-tray, backed up by a vibrant social media presence and a daily e-bulletin".