Brexit (; a portmanteau of "Britain" and "exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU).
Brexit took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET). The UK, which joined the EU precursor, the European Communities (EC), on 1 January 1973, is the only EU member state to have withdrawn, although four overseas territories of member states had previously ceased to exercise membership. Following Brexit, EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union no longer have primacy over British law, but the UK remains bound by obligations in treaties it has with other countries around the world, including many with EU member states and with the EU itself. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retains relevant EU law as domestic law, which the UK can amend or repeal.
The EU and its institutions developed gradually after their establishment. Throughout the period of British membership, Eurosceptic groups had existed in the UK, opposing aspects of the EU and its predecessors. The Labour prime minister Harold Wilson's pro-EC government held a referendum on continued EC membership in 1975, in which 67.2% voted to stay. Despite growing political opposition by a minority of UK politicians to further European integration aimed at "ever closer union" between 1975 and 2016, from factions of the Conservative Party in the 1980s–2000s, no further referendums on the issue were held.
By the mid-2010s, the growing popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as well as pressure from Eurosceptics within his own party, persuaded the Conservative prime minister David Cameron to promise a referendum on British membership of the EU if the Conservatives were returned to government in 2015. Following the 2015 general election, which produced a small and unexpected Conservative majority, the promised referendum on continued EU membership was held on 23 June 2016. Supporters of the Remain campaign included Cameron, the future prime ministers Theresa May, Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham, and the former prime ministers John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; supporters of the Leave campaign included the future prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. The electorate voted to leave the EU by a slight margin, with a 51.9% share of the vote, all regions of England and Wales except Greater London voting in favour of Brexit, and Scotland, Northern Ireland and the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar voting to remain. The result led to Cameron's sudden resignation, his replacement by May, and four years of negotiations with the EU over the terms of departure and future relations, completed under a Johnson-led government, with the Conservatives in office.
The negotiation was both politically challenging and deeply divisive, leading to two snap general elections in 2017 and 2019. One proposal under the second May ministry was overwhelmingly rejected by the UK Parliament, causing great uncertainty and leading to postponement of the withdrawal date to avoid a no-deal Brexit. The UK officially left the European Union on 31 January 2020 after a withdrawal deal was passed by Parliament, but continued to participate in many EU institutions (including the single market and customs union) during an eleven-month transition period during which it was hoped that details of the post-Brexit relationship could be agreed and implemented. Trade deal negotiations continued within days of the scheduled end of the transition period, and the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was signed on 30 December 2020. The effects of Brexit in the UK are in part determined by the cooperation agreement, which provisionally applied from 1 January 2021, until it formally came into force on 1 May 2021.
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "Britain" and "exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU).
Brexit took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET). The UK, which joined the EU precursor, the European Communities (EC), on 1 January 1973, is the only EU member state to have withdrawn, although four overseas territories of member states had previously ceased to exercise membership. Following Brexit, EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union no longer have primacy over British law, but the UK remains bound by obligations in treaties it has with other countries around the world, including many with EU member states and with the EU itself. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retains relevant EU law as domestic law, which the UK can amend or repeal.
The EU and its institutions developed gradually after their establishment. Throughout the period of British membership, Eurosceptic groups had existed in the UK, opposing aspects of the EU and its predecessors. The Labour prime minister Harold Wilson's pro-EC government held a referendum on continued EC membership in 1975, in which 67.2% voted to stay. Despite growing political opposition by a minority of UK politicians to further European integration aimed at "ever closer union" between 1975 and 2016, from factions of the Conservative Party in the 1980s–2000s, no further referendums on the issue were held.
By the mid-2010s, the growing popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as well as pressure from Eurosceptics within his own party, persuaded the Conservative prime minister David Cameron to promise a referendum on British membership of the EU if the Conservatives were returned to government in 2015. Following the 2015 general election, which produced a small and unexpected Conservative majority, the promised referendum on continued EU membership was held on 23 June 2016. Supporters of the Remain campaign included Cameron, the future prime ministers Theresa May, Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham, and the former prime ministers John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; supporters of the Leave campaign included the future prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. The electorate voted to leave the EU by a slight margin, with a 51.9% share of the vote, all regions of England and Wales except Greater London voting in favour of Brexit, and Scotland, Northern Ireland and the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar voting to remain. The result led to Cameron's sudden resignation, his replacement by May, and four years of negotiations with the EU over the terms of departure and future relations, completed under a Johnson-led government, with the Conservatives in office.
The negotiation was both politically challenging and deeply divisive, leading to two snap general elections in 2017 and 2019. One proposal under the second May ministry was overwhelmingly rejected by the UK Parliament, causing great uncertainty and leading to postponement of the withdrawal date to avoid a no-deal Brexit. The UK officially left the European Union on 31 January 2020 after a withdrawal deal was passed by Parliament, but continued to participate in many EU institutions (including the single market and customs union) during an eleven-month transition period during which it was hoped that details of the post-Brexit relationship could be agreed and implemented. Trade deal negotiations continued within days of the scheduled end of the transition period, and the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was signed on 30 December 2020. The effects of Brexit in the UK are in part determined by the cooperation agreement, which provisionally applied from 1 January 2021, until it formally came into force on 1 May 2021.
Timeline
Following a UK-wide referendum on 23 June 2016, in which 51.89 per cent voted in favour of leaving the EU and 48.11 per cent voted to remain a member state, David Cameron resigned as prime minister. On 29 March 2017, the new British government led by Theresa May chose to formally notify the EU of the country's intention to withdraw from the EU in two years' time, despite there being no agreement among UK politicians on objectives for post-Brexit relations with the EU. The withdrawal, originally scheduled for 29 March 2019, was subsequently delayed by the deadlock in the British parliament after the June 2017 general election. This resulted in a hung parliament in which the Conservatives lost their majority but remained the largest party. This deadlock eventually led to three extensions of the UK's Article 50 process.
The deadlock was resolved after a subsequent general election was held in December 2019. In that election, Conservatives who campaigned in support of a "hard-Brexit" withdrawal agreement led by Boris Johnson won an overall majority of 80 seats. After the December 2019 election, the British parliament finally ratified the withdrawal agreement with the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. The UK left the EU at the end of 31 January 2020 CET (11 p.m. GMT). This began a transition period that ended on 31 December 2020 CET (11 p.m. GMT), during which the UK and EU negotiated their future relationship. During the transition, the UK remained subject to EU law and remained part of the European Union Customs Union and the European single market. However, it was no longer part of the EU's political bodies or institutions.
The withdrawal had been advocated by mostly right-wing and conservative hard Eurosceptics and opposed by pro-Europeanists mostly from the rest of the political spectrum. In 1973, the UK joined the European Communities (EC) – principally the European Economic Community (EEC) – and its continued membership was endorsed in the 1975 membership referendum. In the 1970s and 1980s, withdrawal from the EC was advocated mainly by the political left, e.g. in the Labour Party's 1983 election manifesto. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which founded the EU, was ratified by the British parliament in 1993 but was not put to a referendum. The Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party led a rebellion over the ratification of the treaty and, with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the cross-party People's Pledge campaign, then led a collective campaign, particularly after the Treaty of Lisbon was also ratified by the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 without being put to a referendum following a previous promise to hold a referendum on ratifying the abandoned European Constitution, which was never held. After promising to hold a second membership referendum if his government was elected, Conservative prime minister David Cameron held this referendum in 2016. Cameron, who had campaigned to remain, resigned after the result and was succeeded by Theresa May.
On 14 March 2019, the British parliament voted for May to ask the EU to delay Brexit until June, and subsequently until October. Having failed to get her agreement approved, May resigned as prime minister in July and was succeeded by Boris Johnson. He sought to replace parts of the agreement and vowed to leave the EU by the new deadline. On 17 October 2019, the British government and the EU agreed on a revised withdrawal agreement, with new arrangements for Northern Ireland. Parliament approved the agreement for further scrutiny, but rejected passing it into law before the 31 October deadline, and forced the government (through the "Benn Act") to ask for a third Brexit delay. An early general election was then held on 12 December. The Conservatives won a large majority in that election, with Johnson declaring that the UK would leave the EU in early 2020. The withdrawal agreement was ratified by the UK on 23 January and by the EU on 30 January; it came into force on 31 January 2020.
Terminology and etymology
Following the referendum of 23 June 2016, many new pieces of Brexit-related jargon entered popular use. The word Brexit is a portmanteau of the phrase "British exit". 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. Wilding coined Brexit to refer to the end of the UK's membership of the EU; by 2016, usage of the word had increased by 3,400% in one year. On 2 November 2016, the Collins English Dictionary selected Brexit as the word of the year for 2016.
Background: the United Kingdom and EC/EU membership
Some time after de Gaulle resigned in 1969, the UK successfully applied for European Communities (EC) membership. Membership of the then EEC was thoroughly discussed at the long debate in the House of Commons in October 1971. It led to the decisive vote in favour of membership by 356 to 244. As historian Piers Ludlow observed, the 1971 parliamentary debate was of high quality and considered all issues. The British were not "misled and persuaded to accept membership in a narrow commercial entity without being aware that the EEC was a political project liable to develop in the future". The Conservative prime minister Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Accession in 1972. Parliament passed the European Communities Act later that year and the UK joined Denmark and the Republic of Ireland in becoming a member on 1 January 1973, without a referendum.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Labour Party was the more Eurosceptic of the two major parties, and the Conservatives the more Europhile. Labour won the February 1974 general election without a majority and then contested the subsequent October 1974 general election with a commitment to renegotiate Britain's terms of membership of the EC, believing them to be unfavourable, and then hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EC on the new terms. Labour again won the election (this time with a small majority), and in 1975 the UK held its first ever national referendum, asking whether the UK should remain in the EC. Despite significant division within the ruling Labour Party, all major political parties and the mainstream press supported continuing membership of the EC. On 5 June 1975, 67.2% of the electorate and all but two British counties and regions voted to stay in; support for the UK to leave the EC in 1975 appears unrelated to the support for Leave in the 2016 referendum.
In 1979, the UK secured its first opt-out, although the expression was not contemporary; it was the only EEC country not to take part in the European Monetary System.
In October 1990, under pressure from senior ministers and despite Thatcher's deep reservations, the UK joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), with the pound sterling pegged to the deutschmark. Thatcher resigned as prime minister the following month, amid Conservative Party divisions arising partly from her increasingly Eurosceptic views. The UK was forced to withdraw from the ERM on Black Wednesday in September 1992, after the pound sterling came under pressure from currency speculation. Italy left the same month, but would soon rejoin on a different band. The UK did not seek re-entry and remained outside the ERM.
On 1 November 1993, after the UK and the other eleven member states had ratified, the EC became the EU under the Maastricht Treaty compromise between member states seeking deeper integration and those wishing to retain greater national control in the economic and political union. Denmark, France, and the Republic of Ireland held referendums to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. In accordance with Constitution of the United Kingdom, specifically that of parliamentary sovereignty, ratification in the UK was not subject to approval by referendum. Despite this, British constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor wrote that there was "a clear constitutional rationale for requiring a referendum" because although MPs are entrusted with legislative power by the electorate, they are not given authority to transfer that power (the UK's previous three referendums all concerned this). Further, as the ratification of the treaty was in the manifestos of the three major political parties, voters opposed to ratification had limited options for expressing this. For Bogdanor, while the ratification by the House of Commons might be legal, it would not be legitimate—which requires popular consent. The way in which the treaty was ratified, he judged, was "likely to have fundamental consequences both for British politics and for Britain's relationship with the [EC]."
Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom and the role of the EU leadership
Background
Thatcher, who had previously supported the common market and the Single European Act, in the Bruges speech of 1988 warned against "a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". She influenced Daniel Hannan, who in 1990 founded the Oxford Campaign for Independent Britain; "With hindsight, some see this as the start of the campaign for Brexit", the Financial Times later wrote.
The vote to approve the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 triggered a strong Eurosceptic response, splitting the Conservative Party and leading to many past supporters forming alternative Eurosceptic parties. This included Sir James Goldsmith forming the Referendum Party in 1994 to contest the 1997 general election on a platform of providing a referendum on the UK's relationship with the EU.
Role of the EU leadership
Perceptions of EU leadership during major crises significantly contributed to Euroscepticism in the UK. During the eurozone debt crisis, strict austerity measures were imposed as a condition for bailouts, with EU member states, including the UK, asked to contribute to bailout plans. Critics argued that such policies disproportionately served the interests of leading EU nations, particularly Germany, and undermined national sovereignty.