Brexit Explained

In May 2015 the then Prime Minister David Cameron held a general election.

As part of that election he promised that the UK would be able to vote in a referendum on whether the country should stay in or leave the European Union.

This was done in some sort part due to the increasing popularity of UKIP, led by Nigel Farage.

As the name suggests, the United Kingdom Independence Party wanted to leave the EU and even though they only won a third of the votes in the election, their main priority of having a vote was set into motion.

David Cameron and the Conservatives (not a prog rock band) won that election and just over 12 months later, on the 23rd of June 2016, 72.21% of eligible voters of the Great British pubic ticked a box on a bit of paper and 51.89% of those people said it would be a good idea to leave.

David Cameron quit soon after.

This left Theresa May to take control, which is odd as she had been very vocal in voting for the REMAIN side and not the LEAVE side, which won.

On the 29th of March 2016 Mrs May wrote a letter to Donald Tusk, the head of the European Union, to inform him that the UK would indeed be leaving the EU.

This set into motion article 50 of the Lisbon treaty and now requires the UK to get 27 other EU countries to agree to a ton of deals and whatnots in order to settle all outstanding accounts so that the UK and the EU can go their seperate ways.

It is worth noting (very briefly) that are as many differing options and scenarios being banded around as there are conspiracy theories about Jeremy Beadle still being alive (more on THAT later), but it is clear that NOBODY really knows what the end of this will look like.

It is also worth noting that on the 8th of June 2017 - for no real reason whatsoever - Mrs May decided to hold another general election.

She won the election but lost the majority she held previously and now had a hung parliament.

This meant that Mrs May had to find a new friend.... which she did at a cost of £2 BILLION.

Her new friend is called the DUP and they are a political party in Northern Ireland and are now the best chance that Mrs May and the Conservative party have of keeping control of everything that is going on.

Unfortunatly, the DUP have just walked out of talks aimed at solving some issues in the UK/EU meetings that effect the Irish Borders.

But that's not all.

Because although the past two years have seen one prime minister win an election by offering something he didn't want that caused him to resign and his replacement who did not want the job have to take on the task while loosing an election she did not have to do.... we also should mention that the man who did want this to happen (nigel Farage) quit his role of leader of UKIP just after the Brexit vote was announced, although he did come back before leaving again which is similar to that time he left before coming back when he left in 2009......before all of this kicked off.

The UK is set to leave the EU at 11PM Friday the 29th March 2019..

Good luck everybody