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• Introduction

David Cameron and the Brexit referendum

The road to the chequers plan, the northern ireland backstop plan and the challenge to may’s leadership, ongoing opposition to may’s revised brexit plan, deadline extensions, “indicative votes,” and may’s resignation, boris johnson and the brexit finish line.

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• Council on Foreign Relations - Brexit and the Commonwealth of Nations
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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 .

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

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.

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 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.

On March 12 the House of Commons again rejected May’s plan (391–242), and the next day it voted 312–308 against a no-deal Brexit—that is, leaving the EU without a deal in place. On March 14 May barely survived a vote that would have robbed her of control of Brexit and given it to Parliament. On March 20 she asked the EU to extend the deadline for Britain’s departure to June 30. The EU responded by delaying the Brexit deadline until May 22 but only if Parliament had accepted May’s withdrawal plan by the week of March 24.

In the meantime, on March 23 hundreds of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of London demanding that another referendum on Brexit be held. On March 25 the House of Commons voted 329–302 to take control of Parliament’s agenda from the government so as to conduct “indicative votes” on alternative proposals to May’s plan. Eight of those proposals were voted upon on March 27. None of them gained majority support, though a plan that sought to create a “permanent and comprehensive U.K.-wide customs union with the EU” came within six votes of success. That same day May announced that she would resign as party leader and prime minister if the House of Commons were to approve her plan. On March 29 Speaker of the House John Bercow invoked a procedural rule that limited that day’s vote to the withdrawal agreement portion of May’s plan (thus excluding the “political declaration” that addressed the U.K. and EU’s long-term relationship). This time the vote was closer than previous votes had been (286 in support and 344 in opposition), but the plan still went down in defeat.

Time was running out. By April 12 the U.K. had to decide whether it would leave the EU without an agreement on that day or request a longer delay that would require it to participate in elections for the European Parliament . May asked the EU to extend the deadline for Brexit until June 30, and on April 11 the European Council granted the U.K. a “flexible extension” until October 31.

After failing to win sufficient support from Conservatives for her Brexit plan, May entered discussions with Labour leaders on a possible compromise, but these efforts also came up empty. May responded by proposing a new version of the plan that included a temporary customs relationship with the EU and a promise to hold a parliamentary vote on whether another referendum on Brexit should be staged. Her cabinet revolted, and on May 24 May announced that she would step down as party leader on June 7 but would remain as caretaker premier until the Conservatives had chosen her successor.

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.

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What Is Brexit?

The referendum, the article 50 negotiating period, brexit negotiations.

• Arguments for and Against

Brexit Economic Response

June 2017 general election.

• Scotland Referendum

Upsides for Some

U.k.-eu trade after brexit, impact on the u.s., who’s next to leave the eu, the bottom line.

• International Markets

Brexit Meaning and Impact: The Truth About the U.K. Leaving the EU

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Brexit is a portmanteau of the words “British” and “exit” that was coined to refer to the United Kingdom’s decision in a June 23, 2016, referendum to leave the European Union (EU) . Brexit took place at 11 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Jan. 31, 2020.

On Dec. 24, 2020, the U.K. and the EU struck a provisional free-trade agreement ensuring the free trade of goods without tariffs or quotas. However, key details of the future relationship remain uncertain, such as trade in services, which make up 80% of the U.K. economy. This prevented a no-deal Brexit, which would have been significantly damaging to the U.K. economy.

A provisional agreement was approved by the U.K. parliament on Jan. 1, 2021. It was approved by the European Parliament on April 28, 2021. While the deal, known as the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) , allowed tariff- and quota-free trade in goods, U.K.-EU trade still faces customs checks. This means that commerce is not as smooth as when the U.K. was a member of the EU.

Key Takeaways

• Brexit refers to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union (EU).
• Brexit took place on Jan. 31, 2020, following the June 2016 referendum in the country.
• The Leave side received 51.9% of the vote, while the Remain side got 48.1%.
• Negotiations took place between the U.K. and the EU from 2017 to 2019 on the terms of a divorce deal.
• There was a transition period following Brexit that expired on Dec. 31, 2020.

Ellen Lindner / Investopedia

The Leave side won the June 2016 referendum with 51.9% of the ballot, or 17.4 million votes, while Remain received 48.1% or 16.1 million votes. Voter turnout was 72.2%. The results were tallied on a U.K.-wide basis, but the overall figures conceal stark regional differences: 53.4% of English voters supported Brexit, compared to just 38% of Scottish voters.

Because England accounts for the vast majority of the U.K.’s population, support there swayed the result in Brexit’s favor. If the vote were conducted only in Wales (where Leave voters also won), Scotland, and Northern Ireland, Brexit would have received less than 45% of the vote.

The result defied expectations and roiled global markets, causing the British pound to fall to its lowest level against the dollar in 30 years. Former Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum and campaigned for the U.K. to remain in the EU, announced his resignation the following day. He was replaced as leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister by Theresa May in July 2016.

The process of leaving the EU formally began on March 29, 2017, when May triggered  Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The U.K. initially had two years from that date to negotiate a new relationship with the EU.

Following a snap election on June 8, 2017, May remained the country’s leader. However, the Conservatives lost their outright majority in Parliament and agreed on a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party. This later caused May some difficulty getting her Withdrawal Agreement passed in Parliament.

Talks began on June 19, 2017. Questions swirled around the process, partly because Britain’s constitution is unwritten and because no country had left the EU using Article 50 before. A similar move happened, though, when Algeria left the EU’s predecessor after gaining independence from France in 1962, and Greenland, which was a self-governing territory, left Denmark through a special treaty in 1985.

On Nov. 25, 2018, Britain and the EU agreed on a 599-page Withdrawal Agreement, a Brexit deal that touched upon issues such as citizens’ rights, the divorce bill, and the Irish border. Parliament first voted on this agreement on Jan. 15, 2019. Members of Parliament voted 432 to 202 to reject the agreement, the biggest defeat for a government in the House of Commons in recent history.

May stepped down as party leader on June 7, 2019, after failing three times to get the deal she negotiated with the EU approved by the House of Commons. The following month, Boris Johnson, a former mayor of London, foreign minister, and editor of The Spectator , was elected prime minister.

Johnson, a hardline Brexit supporter, campaigned on a platform to leave the EU by the October deadline “do or die” and said he was prepared to leave the EU without a deal. The U.K. and EU negotiators agreed on a new divorce deal on Oct. 17. The main difference from May’s deal was that the Irish backstop clause was replaced with a new arrangement.

Another historic moment occurred in August 2019, when Johnson requested that the queen suspend Parliament from mid-September until Oct. 14, and she approved. This was seen as a ploy to stop members of Parliament from blocking a chaotic exit, and some even called it a coup of sorts. The U.K. Supreme Court’s 11 judges unanimously deemed the move unlawful on Sept. 24 and reversed it.

The negotiating period also led Britain’s political parties to face their own crises. Lawmakers left both the Conservative and Labour parties in protest. There were allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party, and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was criticized for his handling of the issue. In September, Johnson expelled 21 MPs for voting to delay Brexit.

The U.K. was expected to leave the EU by Oct. 31, 2019, but Parliament voted to force the government to seek an extension to the deadline and delayed a vote on the new deal.

Johnson then called for a general election. In the Dec. 12 election, the third general election in less than five years, Johnson’s Conservative Party won a huge majority of 365 seats in the House of Commons out of 650 seats. It managed this despite receiving only 43.6% of the vote due to its opponents being fractured between multiple parties.

Britain’s lead negotiator in the talks with Brussels was David Davis. He was a Yorkshire member of Parliament (MP) until July 9, 2018, when he resigned. He was replaced by housing minister Dominic Raab as Brexit secretary. Raab resigned in protest over May’s deal on Nov. 15, 2018. He was replaced by health and social care minister Stephen Barclay the following day.

The EU’s chief negotiator was Michel Barnier, a French politician.

Preparatory talks exposed divisions in the two sides’ approaches to the process. The U.K. wanted to negotiate the terms of its withdrawal alongside the terms of its post-Brexit relationship with Europe, while Brussels wanted to make sufficient progress on divorce terms by October 2017, only then moving on to a trade deal. In a concession that both pro- and anti-Brexit commentators took as a sign of weakness, U.K. negotiators accepted the EU’s sequenced approach.

Citizens’ Rights

One of the most politically thorny issues faced by Brexit negotiators was the rights of EU citizens living in the U.K. and U.K. citizens living in the EU.

The Withdrawal Agreement allowed for the free movement of EU and U.K. citizens until the end of the transition or implementation period. Citizens were allowed to keep their residency rights if they continued to work, had sufficient resources, or were related to someone who did. To upgrade their residence status to permanent, they had to apply to the host nation. The rights of these citizens were revocable if Britain left without ratifying a deal.

“EU net migration, while still adding to the population as a whole, has fallen to a level last seen in 2009. We are also now seeing more EU8 citizens—those from Central and Eastern European countries, for example, Poland—leaving the U.K. than arriving,” said Jay Lindop, director of the Centre for International Migration, in a government quarterly report released in February 2019.

Britain’s government fought over the rights of EU citizens to remain in the U.K. after Brexit, publicly airing domestic divisions over migration. Following the referendum and Cameron’s resignation, May’s government concluded that it had the right under the “royal prerogative” to trigger Article 50 and begin the formal withdrawal process on its own.

The U.K. Supreme Court intervened, ruling that Parliament had to authorize the measure, and the House of Lords amended the resulting bill to guarantee the rights of EU-born residents. The House of Commons, which had a Tory majority at the time, struck the amendment down, and the unamended bill became law on March 16, 2017.

Conservative opponents of the amendment argued that unilateral guarantees eroded Britain’s negotiating position, while those in favor of it said EU citizens should not be used as bargaining chips.

Some of the economic concerns included the fact that EU migrants were greater contributors to the economy than their U.K. counterparts. Leave supporters, though, read the data as pointing to foreign competition for scarce jobs in Britain.

Brexit Financial Settlement

The Brexit bill was the financial settlement that the U.K. owed Brussels following its withdrawal.

The Withdrawal Agreement didn’t mention a specific figure, but it was estimated to be up to £32.8 billion, according to Downing Street. The total sum included the financial contribution that the U.K. would make during the transition period because it was an EU member state and owed a contribution toward the EU’s outstanding 2020 budget commitments.

The U.K. also received funding from EU programs during the transition period and a share of its assets at the end of it, which included the capital it paid to the European Investment Bank (EIB) .

A December 2017 agreement resolved this long-standing sticking point that threatened to derail negotiations entirely. Barnier’s team launched the first volley in May 2017 with the release of a document listing the 70-odd entities it would take into account when tabulating the bill. The Financial Times estimated that the gross amount requested would be €100 billion. Net of certain U.K. assets, the final bill would be “in the region of €55bn to €75bn.”

Davis’ team, meanwhile, refused EU demands to submit the U.K.’s preferred methodology for tallying the bill. In August, he told the BBC he would not commit to a figure by October, the deadline for assessing “sufficient progress” on issues such as the bill.

The following month, he told the House of Commons that Brexit bill negotiations could go on “for the full duration of the negotiation.”

Davis presented this refusal to the House of Lords as a negotiating tactic, but domestic politics probably explained his reticence. Johnson, who campaigned for Brexit, called EU estimates “extortionate” on July 11, 2017, and agreed with a Tory MP that Brussels could “go whistle” if they wanted “a penny.”

In her September 2017 speech in Florence, Italy, however, May said the U.K. would “honor commitments we have made during the period of our membership.” Barnier confirmed to reporters in October 2019 that Britain would pay what was owed.

The Northern Irish Border

The new Withdrawal Agreement replaced the controversial Irish backstop provision with a protocol. According to the revised deal, the entire U.K. left the EU customs union upon Brexit, but Northern Ireland continued following EU regulations and value-added tax (VAT) laws for goods, while the U.K. government collected the VAT on behalf of the EU.

This meant there was a limited customs border in the Irish Sea with checks at major ports. The Northern Ireland assembly can vote on this arrangement up to four years after the end of the transition period.

The backstop emerged as the main reason for the Brexit impasse. It was a guarantee that there was no “hard border” between Northern Ireland and Ireland. It was an insurance policy that kept Britain in the EU customs union with Northern Ireland following EU single-market rules.

The backstop, which was meant to be temporary and was superseded by a subsequent agreement, could only be removed if both Britain and the EU gave their consent.

May was unable to garner enough support for her deal due to it. Euroskeptic MPs wanted her to add legally binding changes, as they feared it would compromise the country’s autonomy and could last indefinitely. EU leaders refused to remove it and ruled out a time limit on granting Britain the power to remove it. On March 11, 2019, the two sides signed a pact in Strasbourg, France, that did not change the Withdrawal Agreement but added “meaningful legal assurances.” But it wasn’t enough to convince hardline Brexiteers.

For decades during the second half of the 20th century, violence between Protestants and Catholics marred Northern Ireland, and the border between the U.K. countryside and the Republic of Ireland to the south was militarized. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement turned the border almost invisible, except for speed limit signs, which switch from miles per hour in the north to kilometers per hour in the south. 

Negotiators in the U.K. and EU worried about the consequences of reinstating border controls, as Britain had to do in order to end freedom of movement from the EU. Yet leaving the customs union without imposing customs checks at the Northern Irish border or between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain left the door wide open for smuggling . This significant and unique challenge was one of the reasons soft Brexit advocates cited in favor of staying in the EU’s customs union and perhaps its single market.

The issue was further complicated by the Tories’ choice of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party as a coalition partner. The party opposed the Good Friday Agreement and, unlike the Conservative leader at the time, campaigned for Brexit.

Under the Good Friday Agreement, the U.K. government was required to oversee Northern Ireland with “rigorous impartiality.” That proved difficult for a government that depended on the cooperation of a party with an overwhelmingly Protestant support base and historical connections to Protestant paramilitary groups.

Arguments for and Against Brexit

Leave voters based their support for Brexit on a variety of factors, including the European debt crisis , immigration, terrorism, and the perceived drag of Brussels’ bureaucracy on the U.K. economy.

Britain was wary of the European Union’s projects, which Leave supporters felt threatened the U.K.’s sovereignty; the country never opted into the European Union’s monetary union, meaning that it used the pound instead of the  euro . It also remained outside the Schengen Area, meaning that it did not share open borders with a number of other European nations.

Opponents of Brexit also cited a number of rationales for their position:

• The risk involved in pulling out of the EU’s decision-making process, given that it was the largest destination for U.K. exports
• The economic and societal benefits of the EU’s four freedoms: the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people across borders

A common thread in both arguments was that leaving the EU would destabilize the U.K. economy in the short term and make the country poorer in the long term.

In July 2018, May’s cabinet suffered another shake-up when Boris Johnson resigned as the U.K.’s foreign minister and David Davis resigned as Brexit minister over May’s plans to keep close ties to the EU. Johnson was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, who favored a soft Brexit.

Some state institutions backed the Remain supporters’ economic arguments: Bank of England governor Mark Carney called Brexit “the biggest domestic risk to financial stability” in March 2016, and the following month, the Treasury projected lasting damage to the economy under any of three possible post-Brexit scenarios:

• European Economic Area (EEA) membership
• A negotiated bilateral trade deal
• World Trade Organization (WTO) membership

Adapted from “H.M. Treasury analysis: The long-term economic impact of EU membership and the alternatives,” April 2016

Leave supporters discounted such economic projections under the label “Project Fear.” A pro-Brexit outfit associated with the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), which was founded to oppose EU membership, responded by saying that the Treasury’s “worst-case scenario of £4,300 per household is a bargain-basement price for the restoration of national independence and safe, secure borders.”

Although Leave supporters stressed issues of national pride, safety, and sovereignty, they also mustered economic arguments. For example, Johnson said on the eve of the vote, “EU politicians would be banging down the door for a trade deal ” the day after the vote, in light of their “commercial interests.”

Vote Leave, the official pro-Brexit campaign, topped the “Why Vote Leave” page on its website with the claim that the U.K. could save £350 million per week: “We can spend our money on our priorities like the NHS [National Health Service], schools, and housing.”

In May 2016, the U.K. Statistics Authority, an independent public body, said the figure was gross rather than net, which was “misleading and undermines trust in official statistics.” A mid-June poll by Ipsos MORI, however, found that 47% of the country believed the claim.

The day after the referendum, Nigel Farage, who co-founded UKIP and led it until that November, disavowed the figure and said that he was not closely associated with Vote Leave. May also declined to confirm Vote Leave’s NHS promises since taking office.

Though Britain officially left the EU, 2020 was a transition and implementation period. Trade and customs continued during that time, so there wasn’t much on a day-to-day basis that seemed different to U.K. residents. Even so, the decision to leave the EU had an effect on Britain’s economy.

The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed down to around 1.4% in 2018 from 1.9% in 2016 and 2.7% in 2017 as business investment slumped. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that the country’s economy would grow at 1.3% in 2019 and 1.4% in 2020. Instead, growth was 1.6% in 2019 but -10.4% in 2020. GDP rebounded, however, touching 8.7% in 2021 before slowing to 4.3% in 2022.

The U.K. unemployment rate hit a 44-year low at 3.9% in the three months leading up to January 2019. Experts attribute this to employers preferring to retain workers instead of investing in new major projects.

While the fall in the value of the pound after the Brexit vote helped exporters, the higher price of imports was passed onto consumers and had a significant impact on the annual inflation rate. Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation hit 3.1% in the 12 months leading up to November 2017, a nearly six-year high that well exceeded the Bank of England’s 2% target. Inflation fell in 2018 with the decline in oil and gas prices but soared after the global COVID-19 pandemic, rising 8.7% in the 12 months preceding April 2023.

A July 2017 report by the House of Lords cited evidence that U.K. businesses would have to raise wages to attract native-born workers following Brexit, which was “likely to lead to higher prices for consumers.”

International trade was expected to fall due to Brexit, even with the possibility of a raft of free trade deals. Dr. Monique Ebell, former associate research director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, forecasted a -22% reduction in total U.K. goods and services trade if EU membership was replaced by a free trade agreement.

Other free trade agreements were not predicted to pick up the slack. In fact, Ebell saw a pact with the BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa) boosting total trade by 2.2% while a pact with the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand was expected to do slightly better, at 2.6%.

“The single market is a very deep and comprehensive trade agreement aimed at reducing non-tariff barriers,” Ebell wrote in January 2017, “while most non-EU [free trade agreements] seem to be quite ineffective at reducing the non-tariff barriers that are important for services trade.”

On April 18, May called for a snap election to be held on June 8, despite previous promises not to hold one until 2020. Polling at the time suggested May would expand on her slim Parliament majority of 330 seats (there are 650 seats in the Commons). Labour gained rapidly in the polls, however, aided by an embarrassing Tory flip-flop on a proposal for estates to fund end-of-life care.

The Conservatives lost their majority, winning 318 seats to Labour’s 262. The Scottish National Party won 35, with other parties taking 35. The resulting hung Parliament cast doubts on May’s mandate to negotiate Brexit and led the leaders of Labour and the Liberal Democrats to call on May to resign.

Speaking in front of the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, May batted away calls for her to leave her post, saying, “It is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party”—the Tories’ official name—“has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the House of Commons.” The Conservatives struck a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which won 10 seats, to form a coalition.

May presented the election as a chance for the Conservatives to solidify their mandate and strengthen their negotiating position with Brussels. But this backfired.

In the wake of the election, many expected the government’s Brexit position to soften, and they were right. May released a Brexit white paper in July 2018 that mentioned an “association agreement” and a free-trade area for goods with the EU. David Davis resigned as Brexit secretary, and Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest.

But the election also increased the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. The Financial Times predicted that the result made May more vulnerable to pressure from Euroskeptics and her coalition partners. This was evident with the Irish backstop tussle.

With her position weakened, May struggled to unite her party behind her deal and keep control of Brexit.

Scotland’s Independence Referendum

Politicians in Scotland pushed for a second independence referendum in the wake of the Brexit vote, but the results of the June 8, 2017, election cast a pall over their efforts. The Scottish National Party (SNP) lost 21 seats in the Westminster Parliament, and on June 27, 2017, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said her government at Holyrood would “reset” its timetable on independence to focus on delivering a “soft Brexit.”

Not one Scottish local area voted to leave the EU, according to the U.K.’s Electoral Commission, though Moray came close at 49.9%. The country as a whole rejected the referendum by 62.0% to 38.0%.

But because Scotland only contains 8.4% of the U.K.’s population, its vote to Remain (along with that of Northern Ireland, which accounts for just 2.8% of the U.K.’s population) was vastly outweighed by support for Brexit in England and Wales.

Scotland joined England and Wales to form Great Britain in 1707, and the relationship has been tumultuous at times. The SNP, which was founded in the 1930s, had just six of 650 seats in Westminster in 2010. The following year, however, it formed a majority government in the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, partly owing to its promise to hold a referendum on Scottish independence.

2014 Scottish Independence Referendum

That referendum, held in 2014, saw the pro-independence side lose with 44.7% of the vote. Turnout was 84.6%. Far from putting the independence issue to rest, though, the vote fired up nationalist support.

The SNP won 56 of 59 Scottish seats at Westminster the following year, overtaking the Liberal Democrats to become the third-largest party in the U.K. overall. Britain’s electoral map suddenly showed a glaring divide between England and Wales, which was dominated by Tory blue with the occasional patch of Labour red, and all-yellow Scotland.

When Britain voted to leave the EU, Scotland fulminated. A combination of rising nationalism and strong support for Europe led almost immediately to calls for a new independence referendum. In 2017, when the Supreme Court ruled that devolved national assemblies such as Scotland’s parliament could not veto Brexit, the demands grew louder.

On March 13 of that year, Sturgeon called for a second referendum to be held in the autumn of 2018 or spring of 2019. Holyrood backed her by a vote of 69 to 59 on March 28, the day before May’s government triggered Article 50.

Sturgeon’s preferred timing was significant since the two-year countdown initiated by Article 50 ended in the spring of 2019, when the politics surrounding Brexit could be particularly volatile.

What Would Independence Look Like?

Scotland’s economic situation also raised questions about its hypothetical future as an independent country. The crash in oil prices dealt a blow to government finances. In May 2014, its government forecasted 2015–2016 tax receipts from North Sea drilling of £3.4 billion to £9 billion but only collected £60 million, less than 1% of the forecasts’ midpoint.

In reality, these figures were hypothetical since Scotland’s finances were not (and are not) fully devolved, but the estimates were based on the country’s geographical share of North Sea drilling, so they illustrated what it might expect as an independent nation.

The debate over what currency an independent Scotland would use was revived. Former SNP leader Alex Salmond, who was Scotland’s First Minister until November 2014, told the Financial Times that the country could abandon the pound and introduce its own currency, allowing it to float freely or pegging it to sterling. He ruled out joining the euro, but others contended that it would be required for Scotland to join the EU. Another possibility would be to use the pound, which would mean forfeiting control over monetary policy .

On the other hand, a weak currency that floats on global markets can be a boon to U.K. producers that export goods. Industries that rely heavily on exports could actually see some benefit.

In 2023, the top 10 exports from the U.K. were (in U.S. dollars):

• Gems, precious metals: $62 billion
• Aircraft, engines, and parts manufacturing: $23.4 billion
• Vehicles: $18.8 billion
• Pharmaceuticals: $16.5 billion
• Oil refining: $12.2 billion
• Petroleum and gas: $9.8 billion
• Off-road vehicle manufacturing: $7.2 billion
• Jewelry manufacturing: $6.9 billion
• Organic chemicals: $5.9 billion
• Clothing: $5.7 billion

Some sectors were prepared to benefit from the exit. Multinationals listed on the FTSE 100 saw earnings rise as a result of a soft pound. A weak currency was also a boon to the tourism, energy, and service industries.

In May 2016, the State Bank of India, India’s largest commercial bank, suggested that Brexit would benefit India economically. While leaving the eurozone meant that the U.K. no longer had unfettered access to Europe’s single market, it would allow for more focus on trade with India. India would also have more wiggle room if the U.K. were no longer under European trade rules and regulations.

May advocated a “hard Brexit.” By that, she meant that Britain should leave the EU’s single market and customs union and negotiate a trade deal to govern their future relationship. These negotiations would have been conducted during a transition period once a divorce deal was ratified.

The Conservatives’ poor showing in the June 2017 snap election called popular support for a hard Brexit into question. Many in the press speculated that the government could take a softer line. The Brexit White Paper released in July 2018 revealed plans for a softer Brexit. It was too soft for many MPs in her party and too audacious for the EU.

The white paper said the government planned to leave the EU single market and customs union. However, it proposed the creation of a free trade area for goods, which would “avoid the need for customs and regulatory checks at the border and mean that businesses would not need to complete costly customs declarations. And it would enable products to only undergo one set of approvals and authorizations in either market, before being sold in both.” This meant the U.K. would follow EU single-market rules regarding goods.

The white paper acknowledged that a borderless customs arrangement with the EU—one that allowed the U.K. to negotiate free trade agreements with third countries—was “broader in scope than any other that exists between the EU and a third country.”

The government was correct that there was no example of this kind of relationship in Europe. The four broad precedents that existed were the EU’s relationship with Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and WTO members.

The Norway Model: Join the EEA

The first option was for the U.K. to join Norway, Iceland, and Lichtenstein in the European Economic Area (EEA) , which provides access to the EU’s single market for most goods and services (agriculture and fisheries are excluded). At the same time, the EEA is outside the customs union, so Britain could have entered into trade deals with non-EU countries.

But the arrangement was hardly a win-win. The U.K. would be bound by some EU laws while losing its ability to influence those laws through the country’s European Council and European Parliament voting rights. In September 2017, May called this arrangement an unacceptable “loss of democratic control.”

David Davis expressed interest in the Norway model in response to a question he received at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. “It’s something we’ve thought about, but it’s not at the top of our list,” he said. He was referring specifically to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which, like the EEA, offers access to the single market but not the customs union.

The EFTA was once a large organization, but most of its members left to join the EU. Today, it comprises Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland; all but Switzerland are also members of the EEA.

The Switzerland Model

Switzerland’s relationship with the EU, which is governed by around 20 major bilateral pacts with the bloc, is broadly similar to the EEA arrangement. Along with these three, Switzerland is a member of the European Free Trade Association. Switzerland helped set up the EEA, but its people rejected membership in a 1992 referendum.

The country allows the free movement of people and is a member of the passport-free Schengen Area. It is subject to many single-market rules without having much say in making them.

It is outside the customs union, allowing it to negotiate free trade agreements with third countries; usually, but not always, it has negotiated alongside the EEA countries. Switzerland has access to the single market for goods (with the exception of agriculture) but not services (except insurance). It pays a modest amount into the EU’s budget. 

Brexit supporters who wanted to “take back control” wouldn’t have embraced the concessions that the Swiss made on immigration, budget payments, and single-market rules. The EU would probably not have wanted a relationship modeled on the Swiss example, either: Switzerland’s membership in the EFTA but not the EEA, and Schengen but not the EU, is a messy product of the complex history of European integration and—not surprisingly—a referendum.

The Canada Model: A Free Trade Agreement

A third option was to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU along the lines of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a pact that the EU finalized but didn’t fully ratify with Canada. The most obvious problem with this approach is that the U.K. had only two years from triggering Article 50 to negotiate such a deal. The EU refused to discuss a future trading relationship until December of that year at the earliest.

To give a sense of how tight that timetable was, CETA negotiations began in 2009 and concluded in 2014. But just over half of the EU’s 28 national parliaments actually ratified the deal. Persuading the rest could take years. Even subnational legislatures can stand in the way of a deal; the Walloon regional parliament, which represents fewer than four million mainly French-speaking Belgians, single-handedly blocked CETA for a few days in 2016.

To extend the two-year deadline for leaving the EU, Britain needed unanimous approval from the EU. Several U.K. politicians, including Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, stressed the need for a transitional deal of a few years so that (among other reasons) Britain could negotiate EU and third-country trade deals. But this notion was met with resistance from hardline Brexiteers.

Problems with a CETA-Style Agreement

In some ways, comparing Britain’s situation to Canada’s is misleading. Canada already enjoys free trade with the U.S. through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which was built on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) . This means that a trade deal with the EU was not as crucial as it is for the U.K. Canada’s and Britain’s economies are also very different—CETA does not include financial services, one of Britain’s biggest exports to the EU.

Speaking in Florence, Italy, in September 2017, May said the U.K. and EU “can do so much better” than a CETA-style trade agreement since they were beginning from the “unprecedented position” of sharing a body of rules and regulations. She did not elaborate on what “much better” looked like besides calling on both parties to be “creative as well as practical.”

Monique Ebell, formerly of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, stressed that even with an agreement in place, non-tariff barriers were likely to be a significant drag on Britain’s trade with the EU. She expected total U.K. foreign trade—not just flows to and from the EU—under an EU-U.K. trade pact. She reasoned that free trade deals did not generally handle services trade well. Services are a major component of Britain’s international trade; the country enjoys a trade surplus in that segment, which is not the case for goods.

Free trade deals also struggle to rein in non- tariff barriers. Admittedly, Britain and the EU started from a unified regulatory scheme, but divergences would only multiply post-Brexit.

WTO: Go It Alone

If Britain and the EU weren’t able to come to an agreement about their relationship, they would have had to revert to WTO terms. But this default solution wouldn’t have been straightforward, either. Since Britain was a WTO member through the EU, it would have to split tariff schedules with the bloc and divvy out liabilities arising from ongoing trade disputes.

Trading with the EU on WTO terms was the “no-deal” scenario that the Conservative government presented as an acceptable fallback, though most observers see this as a negotiating tactic. In July 2017, U.K. Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said, “People talk about the WTO as if it would be the end of the world. But they forget that is how they currently trade with the United States, with China, with Japan, with India, with the Gulf, and our trading relationship is strong and healthy.”

But for certain industries, the EU’s external tariff would have hit hard: Britain exports 77% of the cars it manufactures, and 58% of these go to Europe. The EU levies 10% tariffs on imported cars. Monique Ebell of the NIESR estimated that leaving the EU single market would reduce overall U.K. goods and services trade—not just that with the EU—by 22% to 30%.

Nor would the U.K. only be giving up its trade arrangements with the EU; under any of the scenarios above, it would probably have lost the trade agreements that the bloc struck with 63 developing countries, as well as progress in negotiating other deals. Replacing these and adding new ones would have been an uncertain prospect. In a September 2017 interview with Politico, Fox said his trade office, which was formed in July 2016, turned away some developing countries looking to negotiate free trade deals because it lacked the capacity to negotiate.

Fox wanted to roll the terms of existing EU trade deals over into new agreements, but some countries were unwilling to give Britain (66 million people, $2.6 trillion GDP) the same terms as the EU (excluding Britain, around 440 million people, $13.9 trillion GDP).

Companies in the U.S. across a wide variety of sectors have made large investments in the U.K. over many years. In fact, American corporations have derived 9% of global foreign affiliate profit from the United Kingdom since 2000. The U.S. also hires a lot of Brits, making U.S. companies one of the U.K.’s largest job markets. The output of U.S. affiliates in the United Kingdom was $129.3 billion in 2021.

The United Kingdom plays a vital role in corporate America’s global infrastructure, from assets under management (AUM) to international sales and research and development (R&D) advancements.

American companies have viewed Britain as a strategic gateway to other countries in the European Union. Brexit is believed to jeopardize the affiliate earnings and stock prices of many companies strategically aligned with the United Kingdom.

American companies and investors that have exposure to European banks and credit markets may be affected by credit risk. European banks may have to replace $123 billion in securities depending on how the exit unfolds. Furthermore, U.K. debt may not be included in European banks’ emergency cash reserves , creating liquidity problems. European asset-backed securities have been in decline since 2007.

Political wrangling over the EU wasn’t limited to Britain. Even following Britain’s departure, most EU members had strong Euroskeptic movements that, while they struggled to win power at the national level, heavily influenced the tenor of national politics in the years that followed. There is still a chance that such movements could secure referendums on EU membership in a few countries at some point in the future.

In May 2016, global research firm Ipsos released a report showing that a majority of respondents in Italy and France believe their countries should hold a referendum on EU membership.

The fragile Italian banking sector has driven a wedge between the EU and the Italian government, which provided bailout funds to save mom-and-pop bondholders from being “bailed in,” as EU rules stipulate. The government abandoned its 2019 budget when the EU threatened it with sanctions. It lowered its planned budget deficit from 2.5% of GDP to 2.04%.

Matteo Salvini, the far-right head of Italy’s Northern League and the country’s deputy prime minister, called for a referendum on EU membership hours after the Brexit vote, saying, “This vote was a slap in the face for all those who say that Europe is their own business and Italians don’t have to meddle with that.”  

The Northern League has an ally in the populist Five Star Movement, whose founder, former comedian Beppe Grillo, called for a referendum on Italy’s membership in the euro—though not the EU. The two parties formed a coalition government in 2018 and made Giuseppe Conte prime minister. Conte ruled out the possibility of “Italexit” in 2018 during the budget standoff.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Euroskeptic National Front, hailed the Brexit vote as a win for nationalism and sovereignty across Europe: “Like a lot of French people, I’m very happy that the U.K. people held on and made the right choice. What we thought was impossible yesterday has now become possible.” She lost the French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron in May 2017, gaining just 33.9% of votes. He won the election again in 2022, beating Le Pen once more.

Macron has warned that the demand for “Frexit” will grow if the EU does not see reforms. According to a 2020–2022 European Social Survey poll, 16% of French citizens want the country to leave the EU, down from 24.3% in a 2016–2017 poll.

When Did Britain Officially Leave the European Union?

Britain officially left the EU on Jan. 31, 2020, at 11 p.m. GMT. The move came after a referendum voted in favor of Brexit on June 23, 2016.

What Were the Reasons Behind Brexit?

There were many reasons why Britain voted to leave the European Union. But some of the main issues behind Brexit included a rise in nationalism, immigration, political autonomy, and the economy. The Leave side garnered almost 52% of the votes, while the Remain side received about 48%.

How Many Countries Are Part of the EU Post-Brexit?

Britain’s departure from the European Union left 27 member states. They are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.

The European Union was established in November 1993 with the Maastricht Treaty. The original members included Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Fifteen other countries would gain membership in the union.

Rising nationalist sentiment, coupled with concerns over the economy and British sovereignty, led the majority of voters in the U.K. to vote to leave the EU. Britain left the union at the end of January 2020 in what is commonly called Brexit. But the move didn’t come without challenges. It required two years of negotiating a deal and a year-long transition period before everything became final.

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What Is Brexit? And What Happens Next?

By Benjamin Mueller Updated Jan. 31, 2020

Brexit is happening.

After three years of haggling in the British Parliament, convulsions at the top of the government and pleas for Brussels to delay its exit, Britain closes the book on nearly half a century of close ties with Europe on Jan. 31.

Its split with the European Union was sealed when Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a resounding victory in December’s general election. That supplied Mr. Johnson with the parliamentary majority he needed to pass legislation in early January setting the terms of Britain’s departure, a goal that repeatedly eluded his predecessor, Theresa May. European lawmakers gave the plan their blessing later in the month.

Mr. Johnson, a brash proponent of withdrawal, will now guide the country through the most critical stage of Brexit: trade negotiations that will determine how closely linked Britain remains with the bloc.

Little will change overnight. At midnight in Brussels on Jan. 31 – 11 p.m. in London, a reminder that the European Union sets the terms of departure – Britain will begin an 11-month transition in which it continues to abide by the bloc’s rules and regulations while deciding what sort of Brexit to pursue.

What ultimately emerges as Britain parts ways with the European Union could determine the shape of the nation and its place in the world for decades. What follows is a basic guide to Brexit: what it is, how it turned into a political mess and how it may ultimately be resolved.

Let’s start with the basics

Why “Brexit”?

A portmanteau of the words Britain and exit, Brexit caught on as shorthand for the proposal that Britain split from the European Union and change its relationship to the bloc on trade, security and migration.

Britain has been debating the pros and cons of membership in a European community of nations almost from the moment the idea was broached. It held its first referendum on membership in what was then called the European Economic Community in 1975, less than three years after it joined. At the time, 67 percent of voters supported staying in the bloc.

But that was hardly the end of the debate.

In 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron promised a national referendum on European Union membership with the idea of settling the question once and for all. The options offered to voters were broad and vague — Remain or Leave — and Mr. Cameron was convinced that Remain would win handily.

That turned out to be a serious miscalculation.

As Britons went to the polls on June 23, 2016, a refugee crisis had made migration a subject of political rage across Europe. Meanwhile, the Leave campaign was hit with accusations that it had relied on lies and that it had broken election laws.

In the end, a withdrawal from the bloc, however ill-defined, emerged with the support of 52 percent of voters.

Debate settled? Hardly.

Brexit advocates had saved for another day the tangled question of what should come next. Even now that Britain has settled the terms of its departure, it remains unclear what sort of relationship with the European Union it wants for the future, a matter that could prove just as divisive as the debate over withdrawal.

How did the referendum vote break down?

Most voters in England and Wales supported Brexit, particularly in rural areas and smaller cities. That overcame majority support for remaining in the European Union among voters in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland. See a detailed map of the vote .

Young people overwhelmingly voted against leaving, while older voters supported it.

Why is it such a big deal?

Europe is Britain’s most important export market and its biggest source of foreign investment, while membership in the bloc has helped London cement its position as a global financial center.

With some regularity, major businesses have announced that they are leaving Britain because of Brexit, or have at least threatened to do so. The list of companies thinking about relocating includes Airbus , which employs 14,000 people and supports more than 100,000 other jobs.

The government has projected that in 15 years, the country’s economy would be 4 percent to 9 percent smaller if Britain left the European Union than if it remained, depending on how it leaves.

Mrs. May had promised that Brexit would mean an end to free movement — that is, the right of people from elsewhere in Europe to live and work in Britain. Working-class people who see immigration as a threat to their jobs viewed that as a triumph. But an end to free movement would cut both ways, and the prospect was dispiriting for young Britons hoping to study or work abroad.

How did we end up with a Jan. 31 deadline?

Before Parliament approved Mr. Johnson’s withdrawal agreement in January, just about the only clear decision it made on Brexit was to give formal notice in 2017 to quit, under Article 50 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, a legal process setting it on a two-year path to departure. That made March 29, 2019, the formal divorce date.

But departure was delayed when it became clear that hard-line pro-Brexit Conservative lawmakers would not accept Mrs. May’s withdrawal deal, which they said would trap Britain in the European market.

The European Union agreed to push the date back to April 12. But the new deadline did not bring about any more agreement in London, and Mrs. May was forced to plead yet again for more time. This time, European leaders insisted on a longer delay, and set Oct. 31 as the date.

Mr. Johnson took office in July, and vowed to take Britain out of the bloc by that deadline, with or without a deal. But opposition lawmakers and rebels in his own party seized control of the Brexit process, and moved to block a no-deal withdrawal, which would have meant Britain leaving without being able to cushion the blow of a sudden divorce.

That forced Mr. Johnson to seek an extension , something he had said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than do. European leaders agreed to extend the deadline by three months, to Jan. 31, as Britain considered its options.

Ultimately, Mr. Johnson persuaded enough opposition lawmakers to agree to an early general election. His Conservative Party won an 80-seat majority, the largest since Margaret Thatcher in 1987.

What happens next?

Much as Jan. 31 marks a symbolic milestone, it is merely the beginning of a potentially more volatile chapter of the turbulent divorce, in which political and business leaders jockey over what sort of Brexit will come to pass.

Every path holds risks for Mr. Johnson, all the more so after an election in which he was buoyed by voters in ex-Labour heartland seats in northern and central England who stand to suffer from trading barriers with Europe.

And the clock is ticking: The end of the transition period is Dec. 31. Any request to extend that deadline would have to be made by June.

Mr. Johnson, though, has repeatedly vowed to complete the departure by the end of the year. If he sticks to his word, Britain and the European Union will have to strike a deal governing future trade across the English Channel at an unusually fast pace. (It took seven years, for example, for the European Union and Canada to negotiate their 2016 trade deal.)

That will involve negotiations over trade in manufactured goods as well as services, which make up the bulk of the British economy. Should the two sides fail to reach an agreement, even a narrow one that leaves some issues for next year, Britain would crash out of the bloc with no deal at all, raising the prospect of tariffs and border disruption that would mirror the sort of no-deal Brexit that lawmakers have long feared.

Among the points of contention will be Mr. Johnson’s wish to break from European standards on labor, the environment and product safety. The more space Britain puts between its rules and Europe’s, the bloc’s leaders have said, the more they will hamper Britain’s access to the European market. Any restrictions of that sort would threaten British jobs, reliant as many of them are on European customers.

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Brexit: How, When and What?

• global issues

42 Questions About Brexit That Need Answering

T he starter’s pistol has fired. British Prime Minister Theresa May has officially triggered “ Article 50 ” of the Lisbon Treaty, initiating a two-year process of negotiations to bring the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

When 52% of the British electorate voted to leave the E.U. in June 2016, few realized just what a fiendishly complicated process it would be. After four decades of European integration, the bloc has buried its tendrils deep within every facet of British life — from its economy to its legal system. The process of Brexit begins in the shadow of great uncertainties for the United Kingdom, its citizens and its residents.

In truth, there are hundreds of unanswered questions about what Brexit will mean to Britain and to Europe. Here are just a few of them:

Leaving the E.U.

What will it cost the U.K. to leave the E.U.?

€60 billion, if the E.U’s senior diplomats get their way. The sum would cover the U.K.’s long-term commitments, such as contributions for pensions and regional development projects that won’t be completed until long after Brexit. The U.K. will try to whittle that down by negotiation, and may look to offset at least part of it against its sizable claims on E.U. institutions, such as its 16% stake in the European Investment Bank, worth nearly €40 billion (see below).

Does Britain have enough negotiators?

Britain hasn’t been in charge of its own trade policy for 44 years and there is a global shortage of trade negotiators. An initial review suggested the U.K. Has only about 20 experts in this field — against 600 highly experienced negotiators in the E.U. The U.K.’s business department has advertised for 300 negotiators and trade specialists. The fear is that strict pay structures will mean obvious candidates in lucrative roles with top law firms will snub working for the public sector.

Where will Brexit negotiations take place?

Almost certainly in Brussels, in the new Europa building. The psychedelic, egg-shaped, eco-friendly home for the European Council and Council of the European Union was designed by Belgian architect Philippe Samyn and brought into use at the beginning of the year. Officials are said to be uncertain about what to do with the U.K. delegation rooms once Brexit happens.

How long will they take?

A very long time. Article 50 begins the formal, two-year process of negotiation only on the terms of withdrawal from the European Union. It can only be extended by agreement with all 27 remaining European Union states. The U.K. hopes to have a framework for the post-Brexit relationship with the EU in place by the end of that process, in April 2019, but many believe that will not be settled for many years. Senior European figures say these talks — on trade, laws, markets, security and more — could take up to a decade, according to former EU ambassador to the U.K. Ivan Rogers. It’s highly likely we’ll still be talking about Brexit in the mid-20s.

Could Queen Elizabeth halt the process?

Theoretically yes, but in reality it would never happen. All bills, including Article 50, need royal assent — in other words, the Queen has to formally agree to make the bill into an Act of Parliament (law). The Queen is also due to introduce a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ in her next Queen’s Speech, which will repeal the European Communities Act 1972, ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the U.K. and enshrining all existing E.U. law into British law. If the Queen were to refuse to give her assent to either, it would spark a constitutional crisis. The last time a monarch did so was in 1707, so anti-Brexiteers needn’t get their hopes up.

Is there any way individual Brits could opt to stay in the E.U.?

The idea of ‘associate E.U. membership’ has been raised, but it’s not likely to go anywhere. Charles Goerens, the European Parliament lawmaker from Luxembourg who came up with the idea, argues this remains a “realistic” aim. This would see Brits who want to work in the bloc granted this status and given a vote in European Parliament elections, while keeping their U.K. passport. British remain campaigners love the idea, but it is likely to be vetoed by May because it will create a two-tier system. Others in the E.U. are far from convinced that it would work.

Could Brexit lead to greater xenophobia towards E.U. migrants?

Reported incidents of religiously or racially motivated crimes in England and Wales was up 41% in July – just after the referendum – on the same no the previous year, according to Home Office figures. Nick Clegg, the pro-E.U. former deputy prime minister, tells TIME: “A Spanish woman in my constituency who has lived in England for many, many years who was talking Spanish to her young son had someone, for the first time, tell her ‘you should be going home’. There’s a sort of everyday nastiness, much of which is not recorded but has clearly increased very sharply – some very nasty people feel that their dark tendencies have been legitimized.” The fear is the start of The Article 50 process could see these prejudices unleashed again.

What happens to Scotland?

Scotland voted overwhelmingly – 62% to 38% – to remain in the E.U. and its government is seeking a way to opt out of Brexit. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has paved the way for a second independence referendum not even three years after Scots narrowly rejected secession from the U.K. She argues Brexit means there is a “material change” that justifies another vote. May has refused to yield to Sturgeon’s demands for a special deal that would give Scotland continued membership of the E.U.’s Single Market. The Scottish Parliament voted on March 28 to hold a second referendum between Autumn 2018 and Spring 2019, by which time the economic risks of Brexit will be coming into ever sharper focus.

What happens to the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland?

After two decades of peace, the fear is that Brexit will create a hard border between a Northern Ireland that is part of the U.K. and a Republic that will remain within the E.U. Britain’s exit from the E.U.’s Customs Union has raised the prospect of physical checks on, for example, trucks carrying goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic. However, lawmakers are hopeful that Ireland will be made a special case and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has argued the E.U. does not want any hard border to be put in place.

What happens to Gibraltar?

Spain has sought to use Brexit as an excuse to turbocharge its long-term desire to take back ‘The Rock’, a peninsular within its borders that has belong to the U.K. since the 18th century. The territory was the most pro-remaining slither voting district, with 96% voting to stay. Spain has suggested a joint sovereignty deal to protect Gibraltar’s ties with the E.U., but foreign minister Alfonso Dastis has acknowledged this is unlikely due to Britain’s refusal to negotiate.

What happens to the Channel Islands?

The most southerly part of the British Isles are self-governing Crown Dependencies and not part of the E.U. However, their key financial services industries do risk losing a degree of access to E.U. markets, making it harder for them to compete with the likes of Ireland and Luxembourg, which have likewise specialized in providing ‘offshore’ services to international companies and investors. Jersey’s financiers have been advising the British government on how the City of London could continue to serve their European customers.

Could cities in Britain opt out of Brexit?

Unlikely, given that it would violate the territorial integrity of the U.K., as well as being impossible to enforce in practice. What to do with an E.U. worker who is allowed to live and work in London, if his or her business suddenly relocated to, for example, Manchester or Edinburgh? Elected mayors, a relatively new feature of political life in the U.K., are trying to develop their own plans, notably in London. Ultimately though, rights of migration and residence are highly likely to be decided at national level.

Coming and Going

What happens to citizens of the U.K. currently living in the E.U. and vice versa?

The House of Lords has defied the Government, voting for an amendment to the Brexit bill that will protect the rights of E.U. nationals living in the U.K. This is further than May wants to go and the government is likely to overturn this amendment when the bill is voted on next. The Prime Minister is looking to nail down a reciprocal deal for the rights of Brits in Europe before making any full commitment to E.U. citizens, but some lawmakers fear this means both groups will end up as “bargaining chips.”

What happens to British pensioners living in the E.U.?

Around 1.2 million Brits are estimated to live in other E.U. member states. Like expats anywhere in the world, they are still entitled to the state pension. What is unclear is whether they will still qualify for increases in payments under what is know as the ‘triple lock’: pensions can go up in line each year with whatever is higher of average earnings, inflation, or 2.5%. However, the U.K. will have to broker a social security deal with the E.U. to make sure triple lock increases are still allowed, otherwise new ex-pat retirees will see their pensions frozen at their initial rate.

Can E.U. citizens allowed to stay after Article 50 expect access to the N.H.S.?

All E.U. citizens in the U.K. have access to the N.H.S. at present, despite a little-known rule that residents who are students or not employed but with plenty of money should have already taken out comprehensive health insurance. The Brexit campaign was partly based on the strain that immigration puts on the N.H.S., so unlimited access – particularly for the recently-arrived – is clearly at risk under the future arrangements. There are fears that even those who have lived in the U.K. for longer than five years might have to fill in an 85-page application form for permanent residency that will give them this access. Reciprocal access of U.K. citizens to E.U. health care systems could also become more complicated.

Will British citizens have to get visas to travel to Europe?

Unlikely, given how much money is at stake in both directions. E.U. citizens spent nearly 7.3 billion pounds visiting the U.K. in 2015, and countries such as Spain and Greece will resist anything that hit their tourism businesses. Still, May’s insistence on a hard Brexit theoretically risks the need for visas to even neighboring France. The E.U. has in recent years worked towards abolishing visas rather than introducing them, not least to support its tourism industry.

What will happen to the Channel Tunnel?

Trains will keep running from London to Paris and Brussels, but the Eurostar company is expecting Brexit to hit its bottom line. In evidence to Parliament executives said there were “no” benefits for the company to Brexit. Indeed, Eurostar’s business case might be undermined through any unforeseen additional costs Brexit could impose. The company has also blamed the economic consequences of the Brexit on a recent reduction of services, but, long-term, the impact is expected to be minimal.

The Economy

What happens to banks in London?

France is trying to woo City of London bankers to Paris. HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said in January that around 1,000 of its staff would move from the British to French capital, while UBS said about a fifth of its 5,000 British staff could go, most likely to Germany’s financial centre, Frankfurt. Dublin and Luxembourg are among other centers hoping to take a slice of the U.K.’s huge banking industry, but Britain retains advantages of history and geography and hopes to keep the sector largely intact.

What will happen to the U.K. car industry, almost all of which is foreign-owned?

Car manufacturers have warned May that the introduction of tariffs would result in job and sale losses for an industry that is booming, with output at its highest level of production since 1999. Four-fifths of all cars made in the U.K. are exported and over half of those go to the E.U., so Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, warned a deal that is as close to the Single Market as possible is vital. Nissan has announced an expansion of is plant in Sunderland in the North-east of England, but GM’s plants in the U.K. look vulnerable after the sale of its European operations to French-based PSA Group.

What will happen to Britain’s farmers?

Farmers are worried their industry will be hit by a 60% loss of income in the form of E.U. subsidies, a situation that Informa Agribusiness Intelligence has warned could see 90% of farms collapse. U.K. ministers have vowed to maintain subsidies to 2020, a year after Brexit negotiations are completed, but thereafter the focus will be on how trade deals will change the sector. There are fears the U.S. will flood the market with cheap beef treated with hormones that were, in effect, banned by the E.U., while a deal with New Zealand could see sheep farm businesses wrecked by cheap imports.

What will happen to Britain’s fishing industry?

The House of Lords reported in December that the U.K.’s fishing industry would need continued access to E.U. markets in order to remain viable. The U.K.’s fishing industry strongly disagrees, and is keen on defending exclusive access to U.K. waters. A deal granting access would be controversial, because re-establishing U.K. control of these waters, ceded in the 1970s, was a major aim among more hardened Brexiteers.

Will Brexit impact British astronauts?

Probably not. Britain is currently a member of the European Space Agency, so there are fears its departure from the E.U. would deny astronauts like former International Space Station resident Tim Peake from making the journey into orbit. But the space flight program is distinct from the E.U., to the extent that Canada is an associate member. British business minister Jesse Norman has confirmed that the U.K.’s future involvement in the ESA will be “handled separately from E.U. discussions.” The E.U. states should be happy with this, given the U.K. is one of the agency’s biggest budget contributors.

What will happen to European football players playing in the U.K.?

Players from E.U. countries will enjoy the same rights to reside and work in the U.K. as any E.U. citizen. Clubs currently have to apply for work permits for players from outside the European Economic Area (REF), and the baseline assumption is that this regime will apply to all non-U.K. players after Brexit. Broadly speaking, permits are easier to get for players who already represent their countries. Applying that principle to E.U. players won’t affect top-level recruitment much, but could limit the signing of young players for club academies.

Will Scotch Whisky cost more?

Depends where you live. Neither the E.U. nor the U.S., the two biggest export markets for Scottish distillers, impose import tariffs under WTO rules, so there is no direct risk there. Prices may rise in countries with which the E.U. has a free-trade agreement (FTA). The 2008 E.U.-Korea FTA, for example, phased out import tariffs on spirits completely (cheese-makers weren’t so lucky, being limited to quotas of tariff-free imports). Just as important as tariffs are FTA provisions that stop other countries from letting cheap local substitutes be labelled as “Scotch.” The U.K. will have to renegotiate tariffs, quotas and brand protection mechanisms in any new deals.

Will the U.K. have to regulate its own nuclear industry?

Yes — but not because of Brexit. Euratom is a 60-year-old agency designed to develop the E.U.’s nuclear energy market. It is legally distinct from the E.U., so there was shock when the U.K. Government sneaked out news recently that it would leave Euratom, which is thought to help provide a fifth of the country’s electricity. Critics say the referendum did not give a mandate for this change, while British regulators, already short of nuclear experts, will have to take over Euratom’s regulatory role and replace treaties it has with the likes of the U.S.

Will E.U. workers in skill shortage industries, such as fruit picking and construction, be allowed to stay in the U.K.?

Even many Brexiteers believe a system of permits will have to be developed for industries that have relied on, in particular, cheap Eastern European workers since the E.U. was expanded in the early 2000s. The fruit-picking industry is heavily lobbying lawmakers, because 95% of its seasonal workforce are from the E.U. However, there is the prospect they will not want to stay if the pound remains weak against the euro. It could prove more financially rewarding for them to exercise their free movement rights in other wealthy E.U. countries.

Is it too risky to take a job in U.K. if you’re a Brit right now?

If the job is fairly short-term, no. Article 50 negotiations will last two years, while May’s push for a transitional period between the divorce settlement and absolute Brexit should offer a few years of additional clarity and certainty on job rights.

The Finances

Will the U.K. still qualify for European Investment Bank (EIB) loans?

Not under the current rules, but the Luxembourg-based EIB has said it’s willing to change them to keep the ship steady. The EIB is a state-backed development bank that lends chiefly to infrastructure projects and indirectly backs programs for lending to small and medium-sized businesses. The U.K., which has some big infrastructure projects in the offing, is rare among E.U. states for not having a state-backed development bank of its own, and may have to tweak its own rules for similar lending by commercial banks to support credit availability.

Will central banks continue to hold sterling as a reserve currency?

The pound’s role as a reserve currency is already minimal, and Deutsche Bank said in January that it will become “increasingly irrelevant” as a global reserve currency (similar forecasts were made prior to the launch of the euro). Central banks no longer need pounds to cover their countries’ trade with the U.K., although Britain’s status as a stable, law-based democracy will mean that sterling remains an attractive store of value, at least if it can avoid further depreciation in the foreign exchange market. But a loss of capital inflows would make it much harder to cover the U.K.’s current account deficit, running at nearly 100 billion pounds a year.

Could Britain slash taxes on goods and services?

The E.U. runs a common V.A.T. system, so the U.K. will be free to introduce new rates for certain goods and services. This could give Britain a huge competitive advantage over its continental neighbors, given attempts to make practical improvements to V.A.T. for insurers and banks have been caught up in Brussels bureaucracy. In theory, Britain could scrap the levy on many products altogether, but it is the second biggest source of tax revenue so this highly unlikely.

What about corporation tax?

The government cut the standard rate of corporate income tax to 19% from 20% in this year’s budget, and pre-announced a further cut to 17% in 2020, the lowest among the G20 group of major industrial and emerging economies. The move aims at incentivising business to stay in the U.K. post-Brexit. Theresa May has hinted that the U.K. could cut it even further if the E.U. chose to punish it for Brexit by refusing favorable trade terms, although some have warned that openly engaging in tax competition could be counterproductive, hardening attitudes against Britain in other member states.

What happens to British university funding?

May seems to be pushing for U.K. to remain part of the E.U.’s Horizon program, which funds university research projects, through a bespoke arrangement. However, vice-chancellors of British institutions have already reported that they are being kicked off as lead universities on cross-border studies and that leading academics are looking to leave or prospective European lecturers think the U.K. is too risky a place to work. Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg says British academics and universities will struggle while they “haven’t got the faintest idea what the status” of the U.K. will ultimately be.

Rules and Regulations

Is the U.K. planning to loosen environmental regulations to stay competitive?

This is uncertain. The U.K.’s environmental and climate change standards and policies are embedded in E.U. law, but after Brexit, Britain will no longer take part in agreeing these fixed regulations and would be able to loosen its own. The E.U.’s emissions trading scheme and the U.K.’s own Climate Change Levy are both unpopular with various business sectors, but the more the U.K. loosens such regulations, the more it will expose itself to E.U. countermeasures to stop would be cast as environmental “dumping.”

What about labor laws?

Theresa May has promised to maintain E.U. labor laws — such as the expansion of discrimination categories in employment law such as age, sexual orientation and religion— through the “Great Repeal Bill,” which turns all existing E.U. rules into domestic law. The Trade Unions Congress, the body representing the majority of Britain’s trade unions, has nonetheless warned that workers rights could be eroded if Britain’s follows through on its threat to turn into a low tax and low regulation haven if it does not get a fair deal from the E.U. But it is unclear how the government will go down this route in reality and according to the OECD’s employment index, Britain is the least regulated labor market in the E.U., meaning there is already very little in terms to labor laws to be loosened.

Is the U.K. likely to loosen food safety standards?

There is a worry among politicians and campaigners that food safety standards will be weakened in the attempt to forge quick trade deals with foreign countries, like the U.S., criticized for their lax regulatory environments. The National Farmers Union is keen for those standards to not be watered down if they leave the E.U. But if other countries with low food safety standards begin to import cheaper produce to the U.K., the NFU is mindful that regulations in the U.K. will have to be changed in order to keep its producers competitive

How will the E.U. and U.K. resolve trade disputes in future?

Today, when British and European companies and governments argue over things like patents, food labelling or the clearing of trades in financial derivatives, the E.U. Court of Justice in Luxembourg is the court of last resort. That will have to change when the U.K. leaves the E.U.’s single market. New trading arrangements need a new legal framework for dispute resolution. The depth and breadth of cross-border trade between the E.U. and U.K. demands a solution that is faster and more specific than the World Trade Organization, but the issue so central to sovereignty concerns at the heart of Brexit, and so fiendishly complex, that a diplomatic and legal miracle will be needed to engineer an arrangement as straightforward as the existing one.

Law and Order

Will Britain continue to share national security data with the E.U.?

The security threats to the U.K. — from Islamist terror, Russian infiltration or organized crime — are to a large degree the same as those facing the E.U., so it’s no surprise that Theresa May has already pledged that cooperation on security will be a key part of the future relationship. The U.K. ‘opted in’ to a new intelligence-sharing program in November, five months after the referendum. Intelligence-gathering — including a unique degree of collaboration with the U.S. – is one of the biggest assets that the U.K. brings to the negotiations, and May will hope to get cooperation in matters going well beyond national security in return for sharing its secrets.

Will E.U. criminals face extradition from the U.K?

A speculative ‘yes’ says Steve Peers, an expert on E.U. law from the University of Essex. The U.K could follow countries, like Norway and Iceland, which are not a part of the E.U., but have created extradition treaties that are “more or less” the same as the European Arrest Warrant (EAW)— which is an E.U.-wide system that makes it easier to extradite people wanted for serious crimes. Leaving the E.U. might also make it easier to deport European criminal defendants who recently moved to the U.K. and committed crimes on British soil. But authorities may face roadblocks deporting criminals who are long-term residents of the U.K., as it could contravene local human rights laws.

Will Britain stay in Europol, the E.U.’s law enforcement body?

Probably. It has already opted to stay in Europol since leaving. The U.K.’s police minister Brandon Lewis said “the reality of cross-border crime remains” even if the U.K. is leaving the E.U. It seems May would like to find an accommodation to stay close to Europol. For example, the U.S. is an associate member and does not have to adhere to European Court of Justice rules.

Will Britain have to tighten its customs borders?

Undoubtedly, and it might make life difficult for importers. British ports alone will have to hire thousands of extra staff to check products from the E.U. that could previously pass through easily, haulage firms have warned. This red tape is likely to delay E.U. goods entering Britain by a day, a huge problem for a manufacturing industry that relies on the ‘just-in-time’ production model of getting parts in and out of factories quickly.

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Write to Mark Leftly at [email protected] and Kate Samuelson at [email protected]

In Pictures

In Pictures: The Brexit saga

A slim majority of britons voted to leave the eu in a june, 2016 referendum. a lot has happened since..

Negotiators from the European Union and Britain worked through the night and into Christmas Eve to put the finishing touches on a trade deal that aims to avert a chaotic economic break between the two sides on New Year’s Day.

After resolving the remaining fair-competition and almost all fisheries issues on Wednesday, negotiators combed through hundreds of pages of legal text that should become the blueprint for a post-Brexit relationship.

As during much of the months-long negotiations, the issue of EU fleets in British waters proved the most intractable and divisive, with negotiators still haggling over quotas for individual species as dawn came.

Despite the breakthrough, key aspects of the future relationship between the 27-nation bloc and its former member remain uncertain. But it leaves the mutually dependent but often fractious UK-EU relationship on a more solid footing than a disruptive no-deal split.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will now claim to have delivered on the promise that won him a resounding election victory a year ago: “Get Brexit Done.”

A short history of the long road to Brexit

The United Kingdom left the European Union on January 31.

by Jen Kirby

A countdown clock , projected onto the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, marked the final minutes of the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union on January 31, 2020. As the clock ticked toward 11 pm, one half of the country celebrated . The other half mourned .

The story of Britain’s breakup with the European Union began long before 52 percent of voters on a June 2016 referendum decided to leave the bloc. And though the UK will officially rescinded its EU membership Friday, the drawn-out and arduous divorce is far from over. Brexit will enter a new phase, as the UK and EU work to figure out all the details of their future relationship : trade, financial services, security cooperation, and much more.

But the moment is still a big one, as the UK ends its EU membership — the first country to do so — and charts a new version of its relationship with the bloc.

Here’s a look at what brought the UK to Brexit.

The beginning

In 1973, the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the European Union.

Even from the start, the public and politicians split on the value of membership.

“In this case it must be acknowledged that a large part of the country is not ecstatic about the score,” the Guardian wrote in an editorial on January 1, 1973 . “The journey into Europe will be bumpy and discordant.”

Just two years later, in 1975, the UK held its first nationwide referendum , which happened to be on membership in the European community. Then, a Labour prime minister was in charge, dealing with a divided party with a strong anti-Europe faction.

Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, championed staying in. Thatcher called for a “massive ‘Yes’ to Europe” in the referendum, wore a Euro-themed sweater . About 67 percent of the country agreed.

But it did not settle question of the UK’s place within Europe. In the four decades since, the UK changed. So did Europe.

Deeper disillusionment sets in

The Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s more closely integrated the member-states, forming the modern EU. The “Maastricht Rebels ” — something of a precursor to today’s Brexiteers — battled to defeat its ratification in the UK, though they ultimately failed .

Even so, the UK managed to carve out distance from the rest of Europe; for example, it never adopted the common currency, the euro. But the British tabloids that had enthusiastically trumpeted a “yes” vote in the 1970s began to blare headlines skeptical of the EU that exaggerated the overreach of bureaucrats in Brussels. The “ban” on barmaids’ cleavage . The “ban” on bendy bananas . The plans, that never existed, for one-size-fits-all condoms , reported by Boris Johnson himself.

The financial crisis in 2008 and the eurozone economic crisis that followed it intensified suspicion about the EU. The influx of immigrants from poorer EU states and, later, fears over refugees and migrants from places like the Middle East and Africa tapped into darker fears about the future of Britain.

Then came the referendum.

The big vote

In 2013, Britain’s then-Prime Minister David Cameron promised that if his Conservative Party won elections, he would hold a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the EU or leave. Cameron partly caved to pressure from the right flank of his party and the UK Independent Party (UKIP) , the right-wing party that was peeling away some Conservative voters .

Cameron won, and kept his promise. The UK held the Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016. There were two choices: Leave (the EU) or Remain.

Cameron backed Remain. Other prominent members of his party did not. The popular former London Mayor Boris Johnson joined the official “Vote Leave” campaign . He campaigned in a big red bus that promised more money for Britain’s national health service, that has become, in its way, the symbol of Brexit: the fervent belief of something better, without clear proof that it exists.

It feels quaint now, compared to some of the darker claims made during the Brexit campaign. Nigel Farage, the current Brexit Party leader associated with the unofficial Leave.EU campaign , stood in front of a billboard of mostly non-white migrant men . “Breaking Point,” the poster read. “The EU has failed us.”

And still, the pundits and the polls seemed to think that the UK would never do it, would never actually leave. “It will be stronger if we stay. It will be weaker if we leave,” Cameron said days before the referendum vote . “That’s a huge risk to Britain — to British families, to British jobs — and it’s irreversible. There is no going back.”

Taking back control. Populism . Immigration fears. B etter trade deals. English nationalism . Anger at the political establishment . Deindustrialization . Misinformation . Russian interference — whatever the combination reasons, spoken or unspoken, 17.4 million people voted to Leave. Northern Ireland and Scotland preferred to remain, but the English (and Welsh) wanted to go.

Cameron resigned, leaving a new prime minister to figure out the divorce. Theresa May got the job, which British politics and political realities and May’s own miscalculations made all but impossible.

Maybe that wasn’t so obvious in March 2017, when May gave official notice to the EU that the UK wanted out. That set off a two-year countdown, to March 29, 2019.

The divorce begins — and soon gets messy

It wasn’t always contentious , the divorce. But the EU and the UK got stuck exactly where they were always going to get stuck: on the issue of a 310-mile border on the island of Ireland .

A peace deal ended a decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland, which turned a dividing line invisible, free of customs checks. How to keep it so once Northern Ireland departed with the UK, and Ireland remained firmly within the EU, became the most urgent issue of Brexit, the stakes incalculably high .

May and the EU thought reached a compromise solution in the fall of 2018. But the “Irish backstop,” as it was known, became politically toxic among the most ardent Brexit supporters, who saw a concession as full-on surrender to the EU.

Her most vocal critics came from within her own Conservative Party. The opposition in Parliament, without the numbers to sway Brexit, saw no reason to help May win.

This brought three historic defeats. The first, on January 15, 2019 , she was always going to lose, but no one knew by how much. It will go down as the worst loss for a prime minister since Britain became a modern democracy . The second that followed, on March 12, 2019, was notable in that it was slightly less embarrassing than the first .

And for another, even more important reason: Britain was hurtling toward the March 29, 2019, deadline without a Brexit deal in place. That threatened doomsday-esque predictions: backlogs at borders, food and medicine shortages, a currency crash, public unrest.

May sought an extension instead.

The EU bought May a little more time, until April 12, 2019. Her attempts to renegotiate the Brexit deal largely failed. Her attempts to get Parliament to finally go along with her deal also failed. May again asked the EU for an extension, and the EU agreed, again. May wanted June, the EU returned with a counter-offer of a “flextension” to October 31, 2019, giving the UK, at maximum, six months to figure it out.

May took it. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, warned the UK: “Please do not waste this time.”

May falls, Boris rises

The UK mostly got around to picking a new prime minister. May tried to make a fourth attempt at pushing a Brexit deal through, but faced with unmoving opposition, she resigned in May . Her Conservative Party elected Boris Johnson , who enthusiastically promised the UK would leave, deal or no deal, on October 31.

He tried, hard. He moved to renegotiate May’s deal. He moved to shutdown Parliament so it couldn’t get in the way. The prorogation of Parliament backfired; lawmakers rebelled against Johnson and made it law that Johnson had to ask the EU for an extension, something he said he’d rather “die in a ditch” than do. Johnson lost his majority in the process.

But the renegotiation plan — that, actually worked. Johnson and the EU agreed to a new protocol for Northern Ireland, one that pleased Brexiteers even as they and Johnson abandoned their allies in Northern Ireland.

The surprise breakthrough came with just weeks to go until the October 31, 2019 deadline. Johnson wanted his vote, Johnson wanted out. Parliament wouldn’t budge; enough Brexit skeptics still sat in Parliament, and, together, they could foil a deal.

Instead of voting to take the EU out on October 31, 2019, they asked Johnson to go back to the EU and ask for more time. Hundreds of thousands more asked for a second referendum, another chance to decide if the UK should leave at all.

Johnson wrote to Brussels, reluctantly . The EU agreed, eventually, to delay again, until January 31, 2020 — within range of a year since the original date of the divorce.

Johnson did the task he had not wanted to do: delay Brexit. He demanded elections in return.

The opposition was reluctant to give them. Johnson’s popularity meant Brexit opponents might lose any leverage left to block Brexit. But a divided Parliament sustained the year-long Brexit deadlock. Johnson’s gamble — that only a new Parliament could end the stalemate — was also a correct one.

And Johnson’s gamble paid off, spectacularly. He won a majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons , wiping out Labour in its once-loyal strongholds and ending the careers of plenty of lawmakers who fought him.

The second referendum cries ended. The opposition turned inward, focusing on the future of their own parties instead . The UK was leaving in January, that was that.

The end — or the end of the beginning

Parliament still went through the motions. Swift approval of the Brexit legislation , resistance out of principle only. “We will always love you and we will never be far,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said as the EU Parliament approved the Brexit deal on January 29.

The UK’s pro-Brexit representatives waved British flags , and all of the Britain’s representatives prepared to leave for good. The remaining members of the European Parliament joined hands and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

The UK’s 40-plus-year membership in the EU expired at 11 pm Friday. As Cameron once predicted, there is no going back — at least not to the way it was. Should it want to rejoin someday, Britain will have to apply, like everyone else .

Johnson delivered a brief address on Friday . “The most important thing to say tonight is that this is not an end, but a beginning,” the prime minister said . “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.”

Farage invaded Parliament Square with Union Jacks. Big Ben did not bong at 11 pm, because it’s under renovations, but a recording tried to make up for it.

Leaving doesn’t unite the country. In Scotland, hundreds gathered for a vigil outside the Scottish Parliament. Pro-EU demonstrators protested in London. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, a Brexit “mood board” captured the surreal day, as people, in dry erase marker, wrote their feelings — “Afraid! glad. Conned!” — on a dry erase board and walked away.

The UK has departed the EU, but what Brexit is, and what it means, is still undecided. The UK must now redefine its relationship with the rest of the continent. This time, on the outside.

More in this stream

What broke Britain?

The EU and UK have extended make-or-break Brexit talks — again

The EU and the UK still haven’t reached a post-Brexit agreement. What’s next?

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UK seeks ‘regular’ EU meetings to rebuild post-Brexit relations

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