Brexit

 Brexit 

Date	March 2017 - 2019
Interest of	Camila Carlbom, Joanna Cherry, Dominic Cummings, Michelle Dewberry, Nigel Farage, Paddy Hannam, Gina Miller, Brendan O'Neill, Gloria De Piero, Alan Riley, Dominique Samuels, Spiked Online, Wolfgang Streeck, Rishi Sunak, Eloise Todd, Guy Verhofstadt, John Ward

Brexit, a portmanteau of the words "British" and "exit", is the process by which the United Kingdom (UK) intends to withdraw from the European Union (EU), as a result of the June 2016 EU Referendum in which 51.9% voted to leave the EU.

Article 50

On 2 October 2016, the first day of the Conservative Party conference, Prime Minister Theresa May announced she would trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union by the end of March 2017 which would make the UK set to leave the EU by the end of March 2019. Although the terms for withdrawal have not been established, May has promised a Bill to remove the European Communities Act 1972 from the statute book and to transfer existing EU laws into the UK domestic law.

On 3 November 2016, upon an application by Gina Miller and others, the High Court ruled that Theresa May's government could not trigger Article 50 without first consulting Parliament. The government appealed this decision which will be heard in the Supreme Court starting on 5 December 2016.

Parliamentary debate

In a House of Commons debate on 11 October 2016, the Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer put 170 questions about Brexit to the government and sought an assurance that Parliament would be given a vote on the terms of the exit negotiations:

"We do accept and respect the result of the referendum. But neither those who voted to remain nor those who voted to leave gave the government a mandate to take an axe to our economy. By flirting with Hard Brexit the Prime Minister puts at risk Britain's access to the single market rather than doing the right thing for jobs, for business and for working people in this country. So much for putting the national interest first!"

For the government, Brexit Secretary David Davis said he was not prepared to outline Brexit aims in detail since it was “not black or white” whether the UK would stay in the single market and Parliament could not expect to be given every detail of the government’s plans for leaving. Davis said the government had a mandate to get the best possible deal but insisted he could go no further than talking about overarching aims because revealing the UK’s top priority would prove “extremely expensive”. Sterling fell to one of its lowest ever levels of $1.22 as David Davis was speaking.

Background

The process of withdrawal from the European Union has, since 2007, been governed by Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. No member state has ever left the EU. Under Article 50, the withdrawal must be in accordance with the Member State's constitutional requirements and uncertainty exists as to the constitutional requirements in the UK. Unless extensions are agreed to unanimously by the Council of the European Union, the timing for leaving under the article is two years from when the UK gives official notice, but this official notice was not given immediately following the referendum in June 2016. The assumption is that during the two-year window new agreements will be negotiated, but there is no requirement that there be new agreements. Some aspects, such as trade agreements, may be made difficult to negotiate by the EU until after Britain has formally left the EU.

Withdrawal has been the goal of various individuals, advocacy groups, and political parties since the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, in 1973, though continued membership of the EEC and the Common Market was approved in a 1975 referendum by 67.2% of votes.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Theresa May	“Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it.”	Theresa May	July 2016
Mark Rutte	“I'm totally, totally, totally against referendums on multilateral agreements.”	Mark Rutte
Frans Timmermans	“They are now being disappointed. Look at what the divisiveness of Brexit has done to the UK. Today, the UK looks like Game of Thrones on steroids.”	Frans Timmermans	16 May 2019

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
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Document:Antisemitism threats will keep destroying Labour	blog post	12 February 2020	Jonathan Cook	If we are only allowed to gently chide Israel in ways that cannot meaningfully advance Palestinian rights, if we are prevented from discussing the strategies of staunchly pro-Israel lobbyists to silence Israel’s critics, if we are denied the right to push for an international boycott of Israel of the kind that helped blacks in South Africa end their own oppression, then nothing is going to change for the Palestinians.
Document:Boris Johnson in Downing Street for five years: what could possibly go wrong?	Article	30 December 2019	John S Warren	All the cards are held by Boris Johnson because he has the answer to all the problems facing Britain. Save, perhaps, one: what could possibly go wrong for the Conservative-Brexit Government?
Document:Boris Johnson is a threat to democracy itself	Article	18 June 2019	Simon Wren-Lewis	We can only hope that while most Conservative members want to live in a world where there is no spoon, enough voters prefer changing the real world in ways that enhance, rather than diminish, our democracy.
Document:Boris Johnson's first two priorities for post-Brexit Britain	Article	1 February 2020	Richard Murphy	Boris Johnson has admitted what Brexit was for. He wants to control and constrain people. The market in labour will be constrained. And let’s not for a moment pretend that a Freeport supports markets: freeports are instead about permitting the free movement of capital beyond the control of the state and without the imposition of any taxes.
Document:Brexit is the villain in accidental death of the economy	Article	6 August 2023	William Keegan	The Brexit miscreants who conned the nation just carry on shamelessly, while their replacements, Rishi Sunak and co, take up the banner and Keir Starmer, once a noble remainer, offends his natural followers by ruling out rejoining the EU or even the single market.
Document:Brexit reveals Corbyn to be the true moderate	blog post	12 September 2019	Jonathan Cook	It is time to stop acting like zealots for neoliberalism, squabbling over which brand of turbo-charged capitalism we prefer, and face up to our collective responsibility to change our and our children’s future.
Document:Britain didn’t vote Labour just to get a new iron chancellor	Article	4 August 2024	William Keegan	The economic damage wrought by Brexit continues. Our investment and growth prospects would benefit enormously if Starmer and Reeves abandoned this policy of “no return to the customs union, single market or freedom of movement”. I repeat what I have said before: the Labour manifesto commits it to removing unnecessary barriers to trade. But Brexit is the most formidable barrier of all!
Document:ECJ Advocate General says UK can revoke Article 50 unilaterally	Article	4 December 2018	Tony Connelly	Article 50 allows the "unilateral revocation of the notification of the intention to withdraw from the EU, until such time as the Withdrawal Agreement is formally concluded"
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Document:Labour has ignored its voters – it is now paying the price	Article	24 June 2021	Paddy Hannam	George Galloway speaks to Spiked Online about the problems faced by the Labour Party, and his campaign in the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election
Document:Legal Challenge To Brexit	Article	27 November 2018		The UK can stop the Brexit process unilaterally, without the consent of the other 27 EU Member States
Document:Message for the Red Wall	blog post	12 April 2022	Clifford Thurlow	"This is my message for the Red Wall. If you reach a crossroads and your destination is to the left and by mistake you turn right, the further you travel along the wrong road the further you will move away from your destination. It is not easy to turn back, to change your mind. Sometimes, you have to in order to survive."
Document:Project Brexit	Comment	24 June 2017	David	Project Brexit: "Doomed to Failure"
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Document:The Brutal Legacy of Bloody Sunday is a Powerful Warning to Those Hoping to Save Brexit	Article	19 March 2019	Patrick Cockburn	What we are seeing is the two most divisive issues in modern British history coming together in a toxic blend: these are Brexit and the Irish question.
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Document:The Challenge of Brexit to the UK	strategy document	2 January 2018	Chris Donnelly	"So, if we consider what qualities and characteristics we need in those whom we select for leadership today, in a period of rapid and profound change, in all sorts of institutions – government departments, big companies, the NHS - the conclusion is that we need to look for people who have abilities that suit a wartime environment"... Leadership understands that in a period of tumultuous change you cannot control, you have to command..."
Document:The Dreamings of Dominic Cummings	Article	24 October 2019	James Meek	For Dominic Cummings the whole Brexit crisis may be a venturesome trial with disposable vessels: voters, the Conservative Party, the United Kingdom. If it doesn’t work out, there’s always California, and the rest of the solar system.
Document:The Price of Peace	blog post	6 November 2018	Craig Murray	It is not possible to understand the current state of play in Brexit negotiations, without understanding that those effectively driving the Tory Party position do not view a hard border with Ireland as undesirable. They view it as a vital achievement en route to rolling back power sharing and all the affirmative measures which brought peace to Northern Ireland, in an affirmation of the glory and power of unionism.
Document:The Real Reason Theresa May’s Brexit Has Failed	Article	2 March 2019	T. J. Coles	So, the choice faced by ordinary British people is between a neoliberal EU supported by millionaires like Kenneth Clarke or an ultra-neoliberal Brexit supported by multimillionaires like Jacob Rees-Mogg. Meanwhile, ordinary working-class people pay the price for these elite games, as usual.
Document:The great con that ruined Britain	Article	3 April 2016	Peter Hitchens	Peter Hitchens, the repentant Thatcherite, has second thoughts about privatisation: if it’s all been so beneficial, why do so many of the containers that arrive in British ports, full of expensive imports, leave this country empty?
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Document:What is the Plan - the Plan is to have no Plan	Article	10 July 2018	John S Warren	The Brexit political mess we are now in, and the deep divisions and rancour that have been created were foreseeable and inevitable: it is a complete, shambolic mess. And be in no doubt: a 2nd Scottish Referendum will now require only 50% + 1 vote. Nothing else is sustainable now.
Document:Where we go from here - Britain after Brexit	Article	28 August 2016	Anthony Barnett	Analysis of the so-called "Brexit" referendum result and prognosis for the future of the UK by a "passionate European" who wants to "keep the European flame alive".
Document:With Brexit, the UK has achieved the gold standard of self-harm	Article	12 June 2022	William Keegan	Events in the foreign exchange market forced the UK off the gold standard in 1931, under what was by then the National Government. The Labour politician Sidney Webb famously declared afterwards: “Nobody told us we could do that.” Brexit, too, is reversible.
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