"As Europe struggled to recover from recession, in 2015 the British prime minister David Cameron tossed Brussels a grenade. He said he would hold a referendum on the UK’s continued EU membership the following year. The torch of British Euroscepticism had passed from left to right. It was now Conservatives rather than Labour who were most anti-European. Cameron’s attempts to appease his ‘leave’ voters by negotiating reforms to the EU were dismissed by the ever cautious Merkel and, in June 2016, to Cameron’s surprise and dismay, the British electorate voted narrowly to leave the EU. The vote was taken as binding by the government. The date decided by Parliament for departure was March 2019."
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Simon Jenkins, A Short History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin (2018)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brexit
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Brexit
Brexit (a portmanteau of "British" and "exit") is the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Following a referendum held on 23 June 2016 in which 51.9 percent of those voting supported leaving the EU, the Government invoked Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union which started a two-year leaving process which was due to conclude with the UK's exit on the 29 March 2019 and then, after an extension, on 31 October 2019. The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020.
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