The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy which, by legislation and convention, operates as a unitary parliamentary democracy. A hereditary monarch, currently King Charles III, serves as head of state while the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, currently Sir Keir Starmer since 2024, serves as the elected head of government.
Sylvia Eileen, Lady Hermon is a retired Unionist politician from Northern Ireland. She served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of North Down from 2001 to 2019.
Vauxhall was a constituency in London. It was represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by members of the Labour Party for the whole of its creation from 1950 until its abolition for the 2024 general election.
Kathryn Sloan Clark, Baroness Clark of Kilwinning, is a British politician and life peer who has served as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the West Scotland region since 2021. A member of the Labour Party, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for North Ayrshire and Arran from 2005 to 2015.
Stephen Anthony Farry is a Northern Irish politician who has been the deputy leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland since December 2016. He announced his resignation on 8 September 2024. Farry was the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Down from 2019, until he lost his seat to independent unionist Alex Easton at the 2024 general election.
The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, was a referendum that took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar under the provisions of the European Union Referendum Act 2015 to ask the electorate whether the country should continue to remain a member of, or leave, the European Union (EU). The result was a vote in favour of leaving the EU, triggering calls to begin the process of the country's withdrawal from the EU commonly termed "Brexit".
Labour for a Referendum (LfR) was a political campaign by members of the Labour Party that sought a referendum in the United Kingdom on the European Union. The movement was set up following a pledge by the Conservative Party to hold an in–out vote if re-elected in 2015 United Kingdom general election. In the election campaign, Labour Party policy was that such a referendum would be an unnecessary distraction from government priorities. Following the Conservative victory in that election, the Labour Party committed to supporting passage of a Referendum Bill through Parliament – thus achieving the result sought by this campaign.
The 2017 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 8 June 2017, two years after the previous general election in 2015; it was the first since 1992 to be held on a day that did not coincide with any local elections. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister Theresa May remained the largest single party in the House of Commons but lost its small overall majority, resulting in the formation of a Conservative minority government with a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland.
Rachael Helen Maskell is a British Labour and Co-operative politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for York Central since 2015. She was Shadow Environment Secretary from 2016 to 2017 and Shadow Employment Secretary in 2020.
The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 12 December 2019, with 47,567,752 registered voters entitled to vote to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, won a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 48, on 43.6 per cent of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since the 1979 general election, though with a narrower popular vote margin than that achieved by the Labour Party over the Conservatives at the 1997 general election. This was the second national election to be held in 2019 in the United Kingdom, the first being the 2019 European Parliament election.
The 2019 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2019 European Parliament election. It was held on Thursday 23 May 2019 and the results announced on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 May 2019, after all the other EU countries had voted. This was the United Kingdom's final participation in a European Parliament election before leaving the European Union on 31 January 2020, and was also the last election to be held under the provisions of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 before its repeal under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and was the first European election in the United Kingdom to be held on a day that did not coincide with any local elections since 1999. This was the first of two national elections that would be held in the United Kingdom in 2019 with the 2019 general election being held six months later in December 2019.
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.
Labour Leave is a Eurosceptic campaign group in the United Kingdom. The group is unofficially affiliated with the Labour Party, and campaigned for the United Kingdom to vote to withdraw from the European Union, in the June 2016 EU Referendum. The group was led by eurosceptic Labour MPs: Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins, and Roger Godsiff.
Campaigning in the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum began unofficially on 20 February 2016 when Prime Minister David Cameron formally announced under the terms of the European Union Referendum Act 2015 that a referendum would be held on the issue of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union. The official campaign period for the 2016 referendum ran from 15 April 2016 until the day of the poll on 23 June 2016.
Florence Dauta Eshalomi is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green since 2019. A Member of the Labour and Co-operative parties, she was Member of the London Assembly (AM) for Lambeth and Southwark from 2016 to 2021. After the Vauxhall constituency was abolished she was elected as the MP for the newly created Vauxhall and Camberwell Green constituency in the 2024 general election.
Theresa May's tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom began on 13 July 2016 when she accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to form a government after the resignation of her predecessor David Cameron in the aftermath of the European Union (EU) membership referendum, and ended upon her resignation on 24 July 2019. May's premiership was dominated by Brexit, terrorist attacks in Westminster, the Manchester Arena and London Bridge, the Grenfell Tower fire, and the Salisbury poisonings. As prime minister, May served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party.
Parliamentary votes on Brexit, sometimes referred to as "meaningful votes", were the parliamentary votes under the terms of Section 13 of the United Kingdom's European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which requires the government of the United Kingdom to bring forward an amendable parliamentary motion at the end of the Article 50 negotiations between the government and the European Union in order to ratify the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
On 15 January 2019, a motion of no confidence in the government of Theresa May was tabled in the House of Commons. On 16 January, the House rejected the motion by a vote of 325 to 306.
A referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, also referred to as a "second referendum", a "rerun", a "people's vote", or a "confirmatory public vote", was proposed by a number of politicians and pressure groups as a way to break the deadlock during the 2017–19 Parliament surrounding the meaningful vote on the Brexit deal.
