Brexit was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET). As of 2020 [update] , the UK is the only member state to have left the EU. Britain entered the predecessor to the EU, the European Communities (EC), on 1 January 1973. Following this, Eurosceptic groups grew in popularity in the UK, opposing aspects of both the EC and the EU. As Euroscepticism increased during the early 2010s, Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech in January 2013 at Bloomberg London, in which he called for reform of the EU and promised an in–out referendum on the UK's membership if the Conservative Party won a majority at the 2015 general election. The Conservatives won 330 seats at the election, giving Cameron a majority of 12, and a bill to hold a referendum was introduced to Parliament that month.
In February 2016, Cameron set the date of the referendum to be 23 June that year, and a period of campaigning began. A total of 33,577,342 votes were cast in the poll, with 51.89% voting for Britain to leave the EU. Cameron announced his resignation as prime minister the next day, with Theresa May taking over the position on 13 July. On 29 March the following year, May delivered a letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, which officially commenced the UK's withdrawal from the EU and began a two-year negotiating process.
Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU began in June 2017, and, by March the following year, a "large part" of the withdrawal agreement had been agreed. [1] On 25 November, the leaders of the remaining 27 EU countries officially endorsed the deal, with May putting it to Parliament in January 2019. The vote on the withdrawal agreement was defeated by 432 votes to 202, the biggest defeat of any government in the House of Commons. Two further votes on the deal—on 12 and 29 March—also resulted in large defeats for May.
Following these defeats, on 24 May the Prime Minister announced her resignation. A leadership contest began, which was won by Boris Johnson on 24 July. With the Brexit deadlock still not broken, on 29 October the Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favour of holding a general election on 12 December. The Conservative Party won 365 seats in the election, giving them a majority of 80 seats. With a majority in the House of Commons now, Johnson's withdrawal agreement was voted through Parliament, and the UK officially left the EU at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020. A transition period—in which Britain remained a part of the European single market and the European Union Customs Union—began, as did negotiation on a new trade deal.
After negotiations throughout 2020, the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was announced on 24 December, allowing goods to be sold between the two markets without tariffs or quotas. At 23:00 on 31 December 2020, the transition period ended, and the UK formally completed its separation from the EU. As of 2023 [update] , the broad consensus of economists is that leaving the EU has had a substantially negative effect on the UK's economy, which is expected to be several percentage points smaller than it would have been if it had remained in the bloc. [2] [3] [4]
The UK entered the EC on 1 January 1973, following the ratification of the Treaty of Accession 1972, signed by the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath. [6] Two years later, on 5 June 1975, a national referendum endorsed the UK's continued membership of the EC, with 67.23% voting that the country should remain in the EC. [7] Over the following decades, Eurosceptic attitudes began to develop within Britain's two main political parties, the Conservatives and the Labour Party. In the 1983 general election, Labour's campaign manifesto vowed to withdraw from the EC within the lifetime of the following Parliament. [8] The manifesto was dubbed "the longest suicide note in history", and the election was won by the Conservatives, led by the incumbent prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. [9] Thatcher continued to serve as prime minister until she resigned on 22 November 1990, amid divisions within the Conservative Party over the UK's involvement in Europe. [10] Two years later, the Maastricht Treaty was signed by the 12 member states of the EC, including the UK, which began the formal establishment of the European Union. [5]
On 6 December 2005, David Cameron, the MP for Witney, was elected as leader of the Conservative Party, beating David Davis in the final round. [11] After serving as leader of the opposition for nearly five years, Cameron led his party into the 2010 general election on 6 May that year. [12] The Conservatives gained 97 seats for a total of 307, making them the largest party in Parliament. [13] Labour, who had been in government before the election, won 258 seats, while the Liberal Democrats, with 57 seats, were the third-largest party. [13] With no single party having won enough seats to form a majority government, the country had its first hung parliament since 1974. [14] All three leaders made statements offering openness to creating an administration with another party, and a series of negotiations began. [15] Just after midnight on 12 May, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement was approved, with Cameron as prime minister and Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, as deputy prime minister. [16]
As well as a new prime minister, the 2010 general election also saw a new generation of more Eurosceptic MPs elected to the UK government. [17] On 24 October 2011, Cameron experienced the largest rebellion over European integration since World War II when 81 Conservative MPs voted in favour of a motion calling for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. [18] Of these 81 MPs, 49 had been elected in 2010. [19] The previous month, a petition carrying over 100,000 signatures that also called for a referendum was delivered to 10 Downing Street. [20] Faced with this growing Euroscepticism, on 23 January 2013, Cameron delivered the Bloomberg speech at Bloomberg London, [21] in which he promised an in–out referendum on EU membership if the Conservatives won a majority at the 2015 general election. [22]
The word Brexit is a portmanteau of the phrase "British exit". [23] According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term was coined in a blog post on the website Euractiv by Peter Wilding, director of European policy at BSkyB, on 15 May 2012. [24] Wilding coined Brexit to refer to the end of UK membership in the EU – by 2016, usage of the word had increased by 3,400% in one year. [25]
Brexit has had lasting impacts on both the EU and UK, and will continue to for many years. [296] [297] [298] The broad consensus of economists is that leaving the EU has had a substantially negative effect on the UK's economy. [2] In a January 2021 survey of leading US and European economists, 86% expected that the UK's economy would be several percentage points smaller by 2030 than it would have been if it had remained in the bloc. [299] Two years later, in February 2023, an analysis by Bloomberg Economics concluded that Brexit was costing the UK £100 billion a year in lost output, leaving the country's economy 4% smaller than it otherwise would have been. [3] Similarly, the Office for Budget Responsibility has also forecasted that Brexit will cause Britain's economy to be 4% smaller, [4] and exports and imports to be 15% lower. [300]
As of 2023 [update] , public opinion of Brexit has also shifted. From 2016 to 2021, views within Britain remained relatively evenly split, with analysts attributing changing patterns to the declining population of elderly Brexit-supporting voters and an increasing number of younger Remain supporters reaching voting age. [2] From 2022 onwards, public opinion changed, with polling conducted by YouGov finding that the public felt that the UK was wrong to leave the EU by 56% to 32%, and that a quarter of Brexit supporters regretted their vote. [2] [301] Among Leave voters who regretted their decision, the most common reasons were a feeling that things had gotten worse since the referendum, and concerns over the economy and cost of living. [302] In January 2023, a similar poll by UnHerd and Focaldata concluded that in all but three of Britain's 632 constituencies, a plurality of people agreed that the UK was wrong to leave the EU. [303] [304]
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve is a British barrister and former politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield from 1997 to 2019 and was the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee from 2015 to 2019.
Gregory William Hands is a British politician who served as Minister for London and Minister of State for Trade Policy from November 2023 to July 2024. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelsea and Fulham, previously Hammersmith and Fulham, from 2005 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as its Chairman from February to November 2023. Hands has served as Minister of State for Trade Policy under four prime ministers, holding the office on four occasions, and also served as Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth from 2021 to 2022.
Get Britain Out is a United Kingdom-based independent cross-party grassroots Eurosceptic group which campaigned for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. The campaign is still in operation and is pushing for the UK to break away from continued alignment with the European Union.
Matthew James Offord is a British Conservative Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hendon in North London from 2010 to 2024. He was previously a member of the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa Governing Council.
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".
Brexit was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Following a referendum held in the UK on 23 June 2016, Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020. The UK, which joined the EU's precursors the European Communities (EC) on 1 January 1973, is the only member state to have withdrawn from the EU. 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.
Huw William Merriman is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bexhill and Battle in East Sussex from 2015 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Minister of State for Rail and HS2 from October 2022 until July 2024. He previously chaired the Transport Select Committee between January 2020 and October 2022. Prior to his parliamentary career, Merriman was a barrister and a local councillor.
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.
On 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom (UK) invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) which began the member state's withdrawal, commonly known as Brexit, from the European Union (EU). In compliance with the TEU, the UK gave formal notice to the European Council of its intention to withdraw from the EU to allow withdrawal negotiations to begin.
A by-election for the House of Commons constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham in Lincolnshire, England, was held on 8 December 2016. It was triggered by the resignation of the Conservative member of parliament (MP) Stephen Phillips, who left Parliament on 4 November 2016 due to policy differences with the Conservative government led by the prime minister, Theresa May, over Brexit – the British withdrawal from the European Union (EU). The Conservatives nominated Caroline Johnson, a paediatrician, to replace Phillips; she won the by-election with more than 50 per cent of the vote, a sizable majority. The Conservatives' vote share fell slightly compared to the result at the previous general election in 2015.
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.
The Brexit withdrawal agreement, officially titled Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, is a treaty between the European Union (EU), Euratom, and the United Kingdom (UK), signed on 24 January 2020, setting the terms of the withdrawal of the UK from the EU and Euratom. The text of the treaty was published on 17 October 2019, and is a renegotiated version of an agreement published in November 2018. The earlier version of the withdrawal agreement was rejected by the House of Commons on three occasions, leading to the resignation of Theresa May as Prime Minister and the appointment of Boris Johnson as the new prime minister on 24 July 2019.
The Irish backstop was a proposed protocol to a draft Brexit withdrawal agreement that never came into force. It was developed by the May government and the European Commission in December 2017 and finalised in November 2018, and aimed to prevent an evident border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit.
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.
Brexit negotiations in 2019 started in August, after having originally concluded in November 2018 with the release of the withdrawal agreement. Negotiations took place between the United Kingdom and the European Union during 2017 and 2018 for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union following the referendum held on 23 June 2016.
The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019, informally referred to as the Benn Act, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that required the Prime Minister of the UK to seek an extension to the Brexit withdrawal date—then scheduled for 31 October 2019—in certain circumstances. The main provisions of the Act were triggered if the House of Commons did not give its consent to either a withdrawal agreement or leaving without a deal by 19 October 2019. The Act proposed a new withdrawal date of 31 January 2020, which the Prime Minister accepted if the proposal was accepted by the European Council.
In the wake of the referendum held in the United Kingdom on 23 June 2016, many new pieces of Brexit-related jargon entered popular use.
Following the referendum in the United Kingdom on its membership of the European Union on 23 June 2016, polling companies continued to use standard questions in order to gauge public opinion on the country's relationship with the EU. Opinion polling overall showed an initial fall in support for Brexit from the referendum to late 2016, when responses were split evenly between support and opposition. Support rose again to a plurality, which held until the 2017 general election. Since then, opinion polls tended to show a plurality of support for remaining in the EU or for the view that Brexit was a mistake, with the estimated margin increasing until a small decrease in 2019. This seems to be largely due to a preference for remaining in the EU among those who did not vote in 2016's referendum. Other reasons suggested include slightly more Leave voters than Remain voters changing how they would vote and the deaths of older voters, most of whom voted to leave the EU.
2010s political history refers to significant political and societal historical events in the United Kingdom in the 2010s, presented as a historical overview in narrative format.
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