Brexit: Deal or No Deal?

This article was co-written and researched by news writers Emma Duncan and Delanie Blubaugh.

In 2013, then Prime Minister David Cameron faced the United Kingdom (UK) in a speech where he illustrated the current obstacles and issues that faced Europe. In the same speech, he told British citizens of his plans to renegotiate Britain’s membership in the European Union (EU) if his party, the Conservative Party, were to win the majority in the nation’s next general election. This half-plea to win the majority from Cameron came following growing support for UKIP, or the United Kingdom Independence Party, and their concrete stance against Britain’s membership in the EU.

Concluding the general election two years later, David Cameron was re-elected to Prime Minister, the Conservative Party won a majority in Parliament, and Cameron began Britain’s membership negotiations with the EU. Meanwhile, Europe faced a growing migrant problem, which swiftly turned into a crisis, and an unstable economy. Cameron’s talks with the EU concerned ways in which Britain can hinder EU regulations, among other issues.

These talks continued for around 10 months, from May 2015 to Feb. 2016, when David Cameron came forward with the results of said negotiations. On this day, Feb. 20, 2016, Cameron also set a date, June 23, 2016, for a referendum where the citizens of Great Britain could vote on whether Britain should stay in the EU or leave. The referendum, as well as Cameron’s negotiations with the EU, were the subject of much media attention.

In modern media fashion, European media exploited the issue to such an extent that when June 23, 2016, finally rolled around, the majority of the British population did not even know what they were voting on. In fact, much of the population believed they were voting on regulations for migration, not whether their nation should leave the EU, which Britain had been a member of since 1973.

Nonetheless, the British exit from the EU, or “Brexit,” won by a small margin, after only 52% of British citizens voted to leave the intergovernmental organization. The turnout on the day of the referendum was very high, with over 70% of citizens coming out to vote, which translates to over 30 million people. Roughly 17 million of those people voted for Brexit.

Cameron set a date for the stay-or-leave referendum, believing that the people would vote to stay in the EU. In fact, prior to the referendum, he had campaigned severely against Brexit, citing it would be “an act of self-harm” to Britain’s economy.

With Cameron’s sore mistake, only a day later, on June 24, 2016, he resigned from Parliament and as Prime Minister, closing out his six years of leadership. A little less than a week later, on June 30, Theresa May (former Home Secretary of the UK), announced that she would be seeking the position of British Prime Minister for the Conservative Party. As much confusion filled the air throughout the UK, May’s goal was clear. She emphasized that Brexit would be taking place given the clear result of the referendum vote.

May became prime minister on July 13, 2016. Fast forward to Jan. 2017, May gives a speech in which she highlights her priorities in terms of the Brexit plan. She mentioned free trade, security, and immigration as a few key issues. Then, in March of the same year, May triggered Article 50 and hence officially began the process for the UK to depart from the EU. This meant that the UK had exactly two years to negotiate a deal with the Union.

On June 19, 2017, the UK and EU began to discuss what the Brexit process would ideally entail for each party. This led to a major deadlock, causing concern about how quickly time was moving and what little progress was being made. It was not until March 2018 that May and the EU both announced that the two sides had reached an agreement on a variety of top-level issues. The official withdrawal agreement was subsequently released to the public on Nov. 14th. One week passes before EU leaders begin to officially publicize their support for the agreement, but things were not looking so good in the UK. British citizens and the Conservative Party alike made it very clear that they were not in support of the agreement for a wide variety of reasons. In the coming months, May barely survived a vote of no confidence in her leadership of the Conservative Party and the UK Parliament rejected her proposed Brexit deal not just once, but in two separate votes.

May resigned as Conservative leader on June 7, 2019, without having successfully negotiated an exit strategy to satisfy her own party or the seat of the EU. May’s successor, Boris Johnson, was chosen as Conservative Leader in part due to his unwavering passion to follow through with Brexit. He claims that, with or without a deal, Brexit will take place by Oct. 31st, 2019. The Oct. 31st deadline exists as the third “push back” date that May had pleaded for when it became clear that no deal was going to be reached by the original deadline or the two delayed deadlines that followed.

Johnson’s dedication to seeing Brexit has triggered much discussion about a “no-deal Brexit” in which the UK would leave the EU at once, without a formal agreement. This means that, overnight, the UK would essentially disappear from the EU. It would bid farewell to all EU institutions, the single market economy and the customs arrangements created to aid trade between EU members by removing all taxes on imports. This would be an incredibly dramatic change for the UK to face, and it would only be the very beginning of an unknown number of unforeseen consequences. However, neither the British parliament nor the EU is budging on the terms of the withdrawal agreement. This means the UK either leaves without a deal on Oct. 31st, or Johnson seeks yet another extended deadline to continue negotiations.

Conclusively, the complexity of Brexit is no secret. The political and economic future of the UK is very much unknown given the number of possibilities that could potentially unfold there just within the next few weeks. Will no-deal Brexit become a reality, or will the EU and the UK eventually reach an agreement after all this time? Only more time will tell.