Bumpy road to UK-EU divorce: pivotal moments leading up to Brexit
Britain’s 47 years in the European Union will come to an end at the stroke of midnight Friday, 31 January, launching an 11-month transition period that will preserve the status quo ahead of the 31 December deadline for Britain and Brussels to negotiate a free trade deal.
Starting with the referendum of 2016, the Brexit saga has enjoyed some profoundly pivotal cliff-edge milestones that led the UK to the current moment; it is poised to break away from the EU on 31 January. Here are some of the events that left their indelible trace on the process leading up to the country’s impending divorce with the bloc.
The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum, or the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar. The question asked was: "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"
The majority of those who voted chose to leave the European Union, with 51.9 percent of the vote, versus 48.1 percent voting to remain. The UK government formally announced the country's withdrawal in March 2017, triggering the beginning of the Brexit process.
Membership of the EU and the European Economic Community which preceded it had long been a topic of debate in the United Kingdom, as earlier, in May 2015, following a Conservative Party manifesto pledge, a legal basis for the EU referendum was established through the European Union Referendum Act of 2015.
Immediately after the referendum result, on 24 June, David Cameron announced that he would resign as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party, having campaigned unsuccessfully for the country to remain in the European Union. David Cameron was succeeded by Theresa May on 13 July 2016.
Former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, originally touted by some as a frontrunner, had chosen not to run after Michael Gove withdrew his backing and announced his own candidacy.
In April 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May sought to try and increase her
Commons majority with a snap general election set for 8 June 2017. At the time she intimated that her reason was to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations, as official talks with the EU were due to start in mid-June.
The prime minister’s decision was to have disastrous consequences for her ability to conclude a deal with the European Union. The snap general election in the UK called by PM Theresa May resulted in a hung Parliament, as the governing Conservative Party remained the largest single party in the House of Commons but unexpectedly lost its small overall majority.
May found herself losing the authority to force compromise on the House of Commons, with the MPs, rather than the government, able to control the parliamentary agenda. The Government announced a new Bill to enshrine the Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and the EU in domestic law on 13 November 2017. Soon after, Theresa May suffered her first House of Commons defeat over Brexit.
Conservative rebels inflicted a humiliating defeat on May in the Commons as they backed an amendment to her European Union withdrawal bill over parliament’s right to a meaningful vote on the Brexit deal. The government had lost by 309 votes to 305. The amendment, tabled by former attorney-general Dominic Grieve, was portrayed as a safeguard to ensure the government could not impose a Brexit deal on parliament against its will.
In reality it was to enshrine in law the concept of the “meaningful vote” – something that was destined to thwart the Prime Minister’s attempts to force her deal through. The amendment subsequently paved the way for parliament to reject May’s Withdrawal deal three times while forcing two extensions to Article 50 on the government.
Prime Minister Theresa May survived a vote of no confidence in her leadership on 11 December 2018 after Conservative MPs voted to back her by 200 to 117, buying her more time to try to sell her unpopular Brexit deal to the divided parliament.
The no confidence motion was laid by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition, after the government had lost a Commons vote to secure parliamentary backing for Theresa May’s Brexit deal on 15 January.