| Types | Advocacy group |
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| Location | Millbank Tower |
| Part of a series of articles on |
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Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union ContentsGlossary of terms |
Business for Britain was a eurosceptic campaign group which sought a renegotiation of the relationship between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU). The campaign was founded in April 2013 by Matthew Elliott. [1]
The company was founded by Matthew Elliott who had founded the TaxPayers' Alliance in 2004. [2] Elliott served as the chief executive of the organisation. [3]
The group published research on the voting record of the UK in the European Parliament in 2014, called Measuring Britain's influence in the Council of Ministers. It cited 55 times that the UK government had rejected a proposal which then went on to be passed by the EU Council. The fact-checking organisation Full Fact felt that this did not show a full picture as often proposals are rejected before being presented to the Council and that there was research to show that a majority of decisions were taken before a vote in the Council. [4] In November 2014, they published a letter signed by more than 500 business leaders which called for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. [5] In June 2015, the Business for Britain Board agreed to form Vote Leave. [1]
Referendums in the United Kingdom are occasionally held at a national, regional or local level. Historically, national referendums are rare due to the long-standing principle of parliamentary sovereignty. There is no constitutional requirement to hold a national referendum for any purpose or on any issue however the UK Parliament is free to legislate through an Act of Parliament for a referendum to be held on any question at any time.
Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom is a continuum of belief ranging from the opposition to certain political policies of the European Union to the complete opposition to the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. It has been a significant element in the politics of the United Kingdom (UK). A 2009 Eurobarometer survey of EU citizens showed support for membership of the EU was lowest in the United Kingdom, alongside Latvia and Hungary.
The TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) is a pressure group in the United Kingdom which was formed in 2004 to campaign for a low-tax society. The group had about 18,000 registered supporters as of 2008 and claimed to have 55,000 by September 2010. However, it has been suggested that a vast majority of these supporters – who do not contribute financially or engage in campaigning – were simply signed up to a mailing list.
Dame Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom is a British politician serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for South Northamptonshire since 2010. A member of the Conservative Party, she has served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health, Start for Life and Primary Care since November 2023. She previously served as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2016 to 2017, Leader of the House of Commons from 2017 to 2019 and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2019 to 2020. Leadsom has twice run to become Leader of the Conservative Party, in 2016 and 2019.
Matthew Jim Elliott, Baron Elliott of Mickle Fell,, is a British political strategist and lobbyist who has served as the chief executive of a number of organisations and been involved in various referendum campaigns, including Vote Leave.
On 23 June 2016, a referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country should remain a member of, or leave, the European Union (EU). The referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU, triggering calls to begin the process of the country's withdrawal from the EU commonly termed "Brexit".
Brexit was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Following a referendum on 23 June 2016, Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020. The UK is the only sovereign country to have left the EU. The UK had been a member state of the EU or its predecessor, the European Communities (EC), since 1 January 1973. Following Brexit, EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union no longer have primacy over British laws. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retains relevant EU law as domestic law, which the UK can amend or repeal.
Left Unity is a left-wing political party in the United Kingdom founded in 2013 when film director and social campaigner Ken Loach appealed for a new party to replace the Labour Party. More than 10,000 people supported Loach's appeal.
The Big Four, also known as G4, refers to France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. France and the United Kingdom are official nuclear-weapon states and are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power of veto, which enables any one of them to prevent the adoption of any "substantive" draft Council resolution, regardless of its level of international support. The United Kingdom is the only country of the Big Four which is not a member state of the European Union, having ended its membership in 2020, pursuant to a referendum held in 2016. France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom are considered major European economic powers and they are the Western European countries individually represented as full members of the G7 and the G20. They have been referred to as the "Big Four of Europe" since the interwar period.
Arron Fraser Andrew Banks is a British businessman and political donor. He is the co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign. Banks was previously one of the largest donors to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and helped Nigel Farage's campaign for Britain to leave the EU.
Vote Leave was a campaigning organisation that supported a "Leave" vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. On 13 April 2016 it was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official campaign in favour of leaving the European Union in the Referendum.
The referendum on EU membership took place on 23 June 2016. Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum was ongoing in the months between the announcement of a referendum and the referendum polling day. Polls on the general principle of the UK's membership of the European Union were carried out for a number of years prior to the referendum. Opinion polls of voters in general tended to show roughly equal proportions in favour of remaining and leaving. Polls of business leaders, scientists, and lawyers showed majorities in favour of remaining. Among non-British citizens in other EU member states, polling suggested that a majority were in favour of the UK remaining in the EU in principle, but that a similarly sized majority believed that if the UK were only able to remain in the EU on renegotiated terms then it should leave.
A number of politicians, public figures, newspapers and magazines, businesses and other organisations endorsed either the United Kingdom remaining in the EU or the United Kingdom leaving the EU during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.
Issues in the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016 are the economic, human and political issues that were discussed during the campaign about the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, during the period leading up to the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016. [Issues that have arisen since then are outside the scope of this article].
After the British EU membership referendum held on 23 June 2016, in which a majority voted to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom experienced political and economic upsets, with spillover effects across the rest of the European Union and the wider world. Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for Remain, announced his resignation on 24 June, triggering a Conservative leadership election, won by Home Secretary Theresa May. Following Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn's loss of a motion of no confidence among the Parliamentary Labour Party, he also faced a leadership challenge, which he won. Nigel Farage stepped down from leadership of the pro-Leave party UKIP in July. After the elected party leader resigned, Farage then became the party's interim leader on 5 October until Paul Nuttall was elected leader on 28 November.
The United Kingdom was a member state of the European Union (EU) and of its predecessor the European Communities (EC) – principally the European Economic Community (EEC) from 1 January 1973 until 31 January 2020. Since the foundation of the EEC, the UK had been an important neighbour and then leading member state, until Brexit ended 47 years of membership. During the UK's time as a member state two referendums were held on the issue of its membership, with the first being held on 5 June 1975, resulting in a vote to stay in the EC, and the second, held on 23 June 2016, which resulted in the vote to leave the EU.
Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum is a debated subject and remains unproven, though multiple sources argue evidence exists demonstrating that the Russian government attempted to influence British public opinion in favour of leaving the European Union. Investigations into this subject have been undertaken by the UK Electoral Commission, the UK Parliament's Culture Select Committee and Intelligence and Security Committee, and the United States Senate. "The Russia Report" published by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament in July 2020 did not specifically address the Brexit campaign, but it concluded that Russian interference in UK politics is commonplace. It also found substantial evidence that there had been interference in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
Brexit: The Uncivil War is a 2019 British television drama film written by James Graham and directed by Toby Haynes. It depicts the lead-up to the 2016 referendum through the activities of the strategists behind the Vote Leave campaign, that prompted the United Kingdom to exit the European Union, known as Brexit. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Dominic Cummings, the Campaign Director of the officially designated Brexit-supporting group, Vote Leave. Rory Kinnear stars as Craig Oliver, one of the leaders of the officially designated Remain-supporting group, Britain Stronger in Europe.
55 Tufton Street is a four-storey Georgian-era townhouse on historic Tufton Street, in Westminster, London, owned by businessman Richard Smith. Since the 2010s the building has hosted a network of libertarian lobby groups and think tanks related to pro-Brexit, climate science denial and other fossil-fuel lobby groups. Some of the organisations it houses have close connections with those at 57 Tufton Street next door, including the Centre for Policy Studies and CapX.
"Singapore-on-Thames", sometimes "Singapore-upon-Thames", was a hypothetical new model for the British economy after Brexit. Under it, the United Kingdom would greatly diverge from its neighbours in the European Union (EU), offering businesses low tax rates and a much lighter regulatory climate as an alternative, much like Singapore does within its region of Asia. The term arose in the media as a characterisation of remarks made by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond to a German newspaper in early 2017, to the effect that if the EU refused access to its single market on terms favourable to the UK then the UK would necessarily have to change its economic system to one less like EU countries in order to remain globally competitive, an outcome he did not want.
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