The Brexit Vote

JUN 23 2016 · 12:00

Result of the United Kingdom's referendum on EU membership, 23 June 2016: Leave 51.9%, Remain 48.1%. Place: United Kingdom (referendum) Figures: David Cameron, UK Prime Minister (resigned the morning after) · Boris Johnson, Vote Leave figurehead · Nigel Farage, UKIP leader · Theresa May, Cameron's successor · Michel Barnier, EU chief negotiator 51.9 to 48.1 Turnout reaches 72.2 percent, the highest in any UK national vote since 1992. Leave wins 51.9 percent to Remain's 48.1, by a margin of 1.27 million votes out of 33.5 million cast. The result is geographically distinct: England outside London and Scotland votes Leave; Scotland and Northern Ireland vote Remain. Cameron, who called the referendum to settle his party's European question, resigns on the steps of Downing Street the following morning. Sterling falls 8 percent against the dollar in a single trading session. The campaign had been fought largely on sovereignty: take back control. Of borders, of laws, of money. The EU's pooled-sovereignty arrangement (the single market's four freedoms, the European Court of Justice, the customs union, the contributions to the EU budget) is reframed by the Leave campaign as a transfer of authority that a sovereign state should never have made and can always retract. The Westphalian principle that a state can unilaterally exit a supranational arrangement is reasserted. Negotiating the Exit Article 50 is triggered on 29 March 2017. Three and a half years of negotiation produce a withdrawal agreement (the May version is rejected three times by the Commons; the Johnson version passes); the United Kingdom formally leaves on 31 January 2020; the transition period ends on 31 December 2020. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement, signed on Christmas Eve 2020, preserves zero-tariff zero-quota trade in goods but imposes customs declarations, sanitary checks, and the end of services passporting. The Westphalian retrieval is achieved at significant cost to both sides. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates a long-run 4 percent reduction in UK GDP versus continued membership. The Northern Ireland Protocol, designed to keep the island border open, creates a customs interface in the Irish Sea that fundamentally complicates UK internal sovereignty over its own territory. Scottish opinion polls show sustained majorities for independence for the first time in the union's history. Pooled sovereignty turns out to have been, on this evidence, easier to enter than to leave; the act of leaving reorganizes the leaving state itself. Video: David Cameron's statement outside Number 10 on the morning of 24 June 2016, the day after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, announcing his resignation.