Brexit

Brexit, the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU), which formally occurred on January 31, 2020. The term Brexit is a portmanteau coined as shorthand for British exit. In a referendum held on June 23, 2016, some 52 percent of those British voters who participated opted to leave the EU, setting the stage for the U.K. to become the first country ever to do so. The details of the separation were negotiated for more than two years following the submission of Britain’s formal request to leave in March 2017, and British Prime Minister Theresa May, whose legacy is inextricably bound to Brexit, was forced to resign in July 2019 after she repeatedly failed to win approval from Parliament for the separation agreement that she had negotiated with the EU. Ultimately, Brexit was accomplished under her successor, Boris Johnson.

David Cameron and the Brexit referendum

In 2013, responding to growing Euroskepticism within his Conservative Party, British Prime Minister David Cameron first pledged to conduct a referendum on whether the U.K. should remain in the EU. Even before the surge of immigration in 2015 that resulted from upheaval in the Middle East and Africa, many Britons had become distressed with the influx of migrants from elsewhere in the EU who had arrived through the EU’s open borders. Exploiting this anti-immigrant sentiment, the Nigel Farage-led nationalist United Kingdom Independence Party made big gains in elections largely at the expense of the Conservatives. Euroskeptics in Britain were also alarmed by British financial obligations that had come about as a result of the EU’s response to the euro-zone debt crisis and the bailout of Greece (2009–12). They argued that Britain had relinquished too much of its sovereignty. Moreover, they were fed up with what they saw as excessive EU regulations on consumers, employers, and the environment.

The Labour and Liberal Democratic parties generally favoured remaining within the EU, and there were still many Conservatives, Cameron among them, who remained committed to British membership, provided that a minimum of reforms could be secured from the U.K.’s 27 partners in the EU. Having triumphed in the 2015 U.K. general election, Cameron prepared to make good on his promise to hold a referendum on EU membership before 2017, but first he sought to win concessions from the European Council that would address some of the concerns of those Britons who wanted out of the EU (an undertaking Cameron characterized as “Mission Possible”). In February 2016 EU leaders agreed to comply with a number of Cameron’s requests, including, notably, allowing the U.K. to limit benefits for migrant workers during their first four years in Britain, though this so-called “emergency brake” could be applied only for seven years. Britain also was to be exempt from the EU’s “ever-closer union” commitment, was permitted to maintain the pound sterling as its currency, and was reimbursed for money spent on euro-zone bailouts.

With that agreement in hand, Cameron scheduled the referendum for June 2016 and took the lead in the “remain” campaign, which focused on an organization called Britain Stronger in Europe and argued for the benefits of participation in the EU’s single market. The “leave” effort, which coalesced around the Vote Leave campaign, was headed up by ex-London mayor Boris Johnson, who was widely seen as a challenger for Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative Party. Johnson repeatedly claimed that the EU had “changed out of all recognition” from the common market that Britain had joined in 1973, and Leavers argued that EU membership prevented Britain from negotiating advantageous trade deals. Both sides made gloom-and-doom proclamations regarding the consequences that would result from their opponents’ triumph, and both sides lined up expert testimony and studies supporting their visions. They also racked up celebrity endorsements that ranged from the powerful (U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde on the remain side and former British foreign minister Lord David Owen and Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on the leave side) to the glamorous (actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Sir Patrick Stewart backing the remain effort and actor Sir Michael Caine and former cricket star Ian Botham being in the leave ranks).

Opinion polling on the eve of the referendum showed both sides of the Brexit question fairly evenly divided, but, when the votes were tallied, some 52 percent of those who voted had chosen to leave the EU. Cameron resigned in order to allow his successor to conduct the negotiations on the British departure. In announcing his resignation, he said, “I don’t think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.”

Theresa’s May’s Brexit failure

The road to the Chequers plan

Although Johnson had appeared to be poised to replace Cameron, as events played out, Home Secretary Theresa May became the new leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in July 2016. May, who had opposed Brexit, came into office promising to see it to completion, On March 29, 2017, she formally submitted a six-page letter to European Council Pres. Donald Tusk invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, thus opening a two-year window for negotiations between the U.K. and the EU over the details of separation. In the letter, May pledged to enter the discussions “constructively and respectfully, in a spirit of sincere cooperation.” She also hoped that a “bold and ambitious Free Trade Agreement” would result from the negotiations.

Attempting to secure a mandate for her vision of Brexit, May called a snap election for Parliament for June 2017. Instead of gaining a stronger hand for the Brexit negotiations, however, she saw her Conservative Party lose its governing majority in the House of Commons and become dependent on “confidence and supply” support from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). May’s objective of arriving at a cohesive approach for her government’s Brexit negotiations was further complicated by the wide disagreement that persisted within the Conservative Party both on details related to the British proposal for separation and on the broader issues involved.

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Despite forceful opposition by “hard” Brexiters, a consensus on the nuts and bolts of the government’s Brexit plan appeared to emerge from a marathon meeting of the cabinet in July at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat. The working document produced by that meeting committed Britain to “ongoing harmonization” with EU rules and called for the creation of a “joint institutional framework” under which agreements between the U.K. and the EU would be handled in the U.K. by British courts and in the EU by EU courts. Although the proposal mandated that Britain would regain control over how many people could enter the country, it also outlined a “mobility framework” that would permit British and EU citizens to apply for work and for study in each other’s territories. May’s “softer” approach, grounded in policies aimed at preserving economic ties with the EU, looked to have won the day, but in short order the government’s apparent harmony was disrupted by the resignations of Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Davis (who complained that May’s plan gave up too much, too easily), and foreign secretary Johnson, who wrote in his letter of resignation that the dream of Brexit was being “suffocated by needless self-doubt.” Confronted with the possibility of a vote of confidence on her leadership of the Conservative Party, May reportedly warned fellow Tories to back her Brexit plan or risk handing power to a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government.

In November the leaders of the EU’s other member countries formally agreed to the terms of a withdrawal deal (the Chequers plan) that May claimed “delivered for the British people” and set the United Kingdom “on course for a prosperous future.” Under the plan Britain was to satisfy its long-term financial obligations by paying some $50 billion to the EU. Britain’s departure from the EU was set for March 29, 2019, but, according to the agreement, the U.K. would continue to abide by EU rules and regulations until at least December 2020 while negotiations continued on the details of the long-term relationship between the EU and the U.K.

The Northern Ireland backstop plan and the challenge to May’s leadership

The agreement, which was scheduled for debate by the House of Commons in December, still faced strong opposition in Parliament, not only from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, and the DUP but also from many Conservatives. Meanwhile, a call for a new referendum on Brexit was gaining traction, but May adamantly refused to consider that option, countering that the British people had already expressed their will. The principal stumbling block for many of the agreement’s opponents was the so-called Northern Ireland backstop plan, which sought to preserve the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement by maintaining an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit. The backstop plan called for a legally binding customs arrangement between the EU and Northern Ireland to go into effect should the U.K. and the EU not reach a long-term agreement by December 2020. Opponents of the backstop were concerned that it created the possibility of effectively establishing a customs border down the Irish Sea by setting up regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

The issue came to the fore in the first week of December, when the government was forced to publish in full Attorney General Geoffrey Cox’s legal advice for the government on the Brexit agreement. In Cox’s opinion, without agreement between the U.K. and the EU, the terms of the backstop plan could persist “indefinitely,” leaving Britain legally prevented from ending the agreement absent EU approval. This controversial issue loomed large as the House of Commons undertook five days of debate in advance of a vote on the Brexit agreement scheduled for December 11. With a humiliating rejection of the agreement by the House of Commons likely, on December 10 May chose to dramatically interrupt the debate after three days and postpone the vote, promising to pursue new assurances from the EU regarding the backstop. The opposition responded by threatening to hold a vote of confidence and to call for an early election, but a more immediate threat to May’s version of Brexit came when a hard-line Brexit faction within the Conservative Party forced a vote on her leadership. Needing the votes of 159 MPs to survive as leader, May received 200, and, under Conservative Party rules, she could not be challenged as party leader for another year.

The longer it remained unsettled, the more the matter of Brexit became the defining issue of British politics. With opinions on May’s version of Brexit and on Brexit in general crossing ideological lines, both Labour and the Conservatives were roiling with internecine conflict.

In pursuit of greater support in Parliament for her revised Brexit plan, May secured new promises of cooperation on the backstop plan from EU leaders. Agreement was reached on a “joint legally binding instrument” under which Britain could initiate a “formal dispute” with the EU if the EU were to attempt to keep Britain bound to the backstop plan indefinitely. Another “joint statement” committed the U.K. and the EU to arriving at a replacement for the backstop plan by December 2020. Moreover, a “unilateral declaration” by May’s government stressed that there was nothing to prevent the U.K. from abandoning the backstop should negotiations on an alternative arrangement with the EU collapse without the likelihood of resolution. According to Attorney General Cox, the new assurances reduced the risk of the U.K.’s being indefinitely confined by the backstop agreement, but they did not fundamentally change the agreement’s legal status.

Boris Johnson and the Brexit finish line

May’s successor as party leader and prime minister, Boris Johnson, promised to remove the U.K. from the EU without an exit agreement if the deal May had negotiated was not altered to his satisfaction; however, he faced broad opposition (even among Conservatives) to his advocacy of a no-deal Brexit. Johnson’s political maneuvering (including proroguing Parliament just weeks before the revised October 31 departure deadline) was strongly countered by legislative measures advanced by those opposed to leaving the EU without an agreement in place. In early September a vote of the House of Commons forced the new prime minister to request a delay of the British withdrawal from the EU until January 31, 2020, despite the fact that on October 22 the House approved, in principle, the agreement that Johnson had negotiated, which replaced the backstop with the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, a plan to keep Northern Ireland aligned with the EU for at least four years from the end of the transition period.

In search of a mandate for his vision of Brexit, Johnson tried and failed several times to call a snap election. Because the election would fall outside the five-year term stipulated by the Fixed Terms of Parliament Act, Johnson needed opposition support to achieve the approval of two-thirds of the House of Commons required for the election to be held. Finally, after the possibility of no-deal Brexit was blocked, Labour leader Corbyn agreed to allow British voters once again to decide the fate of Brexit. In the election, held on December 12, 2019, the Conservatives recorded their most decisive victory since 1987, adding 48 seats to secure a solid Parliamentary majority of 365 seats and setting the stage for the realization of a Johnson-style Brexit. At 11:00 pm London time on January 31, the United Kingdom formally withdrew from the European Union. The freedom to work and move freely between the U.K. and the EU became a thing of the past.

Although Britain’s formal departure from the EU was completed, final details relating to a new trade deal between the U.K. and the EU remained to be resolved. On December 24, 2020, the December 31 deadline for that resolution was only barely met. The resultant 2,000-page agreement clarified that there would be no limits or taxes on goods sold between U.K. and EU parties; however, an extensive regimen of paperwork for such transactions and transport of goods was put in place.

In June 2022 Johnson sought to jettison part of the trade agreement, introducing legislation in Parliament that would remove checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from elsewhere in the U.K. The Johnson government averred that overly stringent application of the customs rules by the EU was undermining business and threatening peace in Northern Ireland. Unionists had complained that these customs checks were jeopardizing Northern Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the U.K., and the DUP refused to re-enter Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive until the checks were eliminated. Opponents of Johnson’s action, including May, argued that the move was illegal, and the EU threatened retaliation.