Brexit deal done: the key dates in the UK exit from the EU

Five years ago today, David Cameron resigned on the steps of Downing Street, whistling as he re-entered No. 10, having lost a referendum on which he had staked his political career.

Against the expectations of many, the country had voted to leave the EU, ending a 47-year membership dating back to the bloc’s predecessor the European Economic Community (EEC).

Britain Stronger in Europe, the Remain campaign, and Vote Leave, both fought fierce battles to convince the nation of their argument to stay or to strike out alone. Five years later, here is what the campaigns got right – and what they got wrong.

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What they got right

Remain claimed:

In an op-ed in The Telegraph in December 2015, former Conservative home secretary William Hague warned that the UK’s exit from the bloc could “increase the chances... of Scotland leaving the UK”. The former Tory leader was generally viewed as a Eurosceptic, but argued that a vote to leave would end up “destroying the United Kingdom”.

“Scottish nationalists would jump at the chance to reverse the argument of last year’s referendum – now it would be them saying they would stay in Europe without us”, he said. “They would have the pretext for their second referendum, and the result of it could well be too close to call.”

His claim was echoed by a number of promiment Remain campaigners, with Peter Mandelson, the former Labour director of communications and Britain Stronger in Europe board member, warning in 2016 that voting to leave would “irrevocably reorder our United Kingdom”.

What happened:

Brexit did indeed reignite the debate over Scottish independence.

Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, backing Remain by 62% to 38%. And for the SNP, the vote was “proof that Scotland needed to take its future into its own hands” rather than being tied to the results of the UK vote, the BBC says.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon used the vote to immediately push for another referendum, which she initially wanted to take place before the UK left the EU to stop Scotland from being “dragged out against its will”.

The government so far has refused to grant another referendum on independence to Scotland, with Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove telling The Telegraph this week that he “can’t see” Boris Johnson granting permission for Scotland to hold a referendum before the next election.

But with a pro-independence majority now in place in Holyrood, Sturgeon has argued she has a clear mandate for another independence referendum, dubbed “indyref2”.

Sturgeon told Channel 4 in May that she is ready to legislate for a second referendum without Westminster approval, claiming a second vote on independence is a matter of “when not if”, adding: “If Boris Johnson wants to stop that he would have to go to court.”

Leave claimed:

One of the big promises of the Leave campaign was to “take back the power to negotiate our own trade deals”.

“After we retake control, we will negotiate new agreements with countries like India, which represent the future of global growth, much faster than the EU slowcoach wants to or is able to,” the Vote Leave campaign argued in its campaign literature.

What happened:

While the UK hasn’t signed a free trade agreement with India yet, in May Johnson announced new trade and investment deals with the country worth £1bn, the BBC reports. The new partnership will “pave the way” for a future UK-India free trade agreement, a government spokesperson said.

The UK has been signing trade deals “thick and fast” since the transition period ended, says Louise Curran, a professor of international business, in The Conversation. However, many of the early deals, such as those made with countries such as Vietnam, Japan and Norway are “grandfathered” deals, she adds, meaning “renegotiations with countries with whom the country already had market access agreements by virtue of EU membership.”

The UK agreed, in principle, its first truly bilateral free trade deal with Australia last week, removing tariffs on imported Australian goods and produce.

Johnson hailed the agreement as a “new dawn” in the UK’s relationship with Australia, adding that it would provide “fantastic opportunities for British businesses and consumers, as well as young people wanting the chance to work and live on the other side of the world.”

Critics have said the deal is “small beer”, The Guardian reports, adding just 0.02% to Britain’s GDP, 47 times less than the UK’s annual trade with the EU. “You could call it a rounding error, but to be honest, even that is overselling it,” the paper’s economics correspondent Greg Jerico said.

But advocates have said the deal has a far greater political importance than economic, says Sky News political correspondent Tamara Cohen, with ministers hoping it “leads the way” to membership of a larger Asia-Pacific trading bloc, turning “Global Britain” from “ambition into action”.

Britain will this week hold further talks in the hope of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, through which it would strengthen ties with the 11 countries in the bloc, representing a market of around 500 million people.

What they got wrong

Remain claimed:

George Osborne, then chancellor of the exchequer, warned that leaving the European Union would create a £30bn black hole in the public purse, with huge amounts of cash needed to stem the “economic pain of a so-called Brexit” the Financial Times reported in June 2016.

Osborne warned that if Brexit came to pass he would be forced to deliver an emergency budget – dubbed the “punishment budget” by some pro-Leave MPs – that would see harsh cuts to public spending and increased taxes.

“Far from freeing up money to spend on public services as the leave campaign would like you to believe, quitting the EU would mean less money”, Osborne said in a speech on BBC Radio 4. “Billions less. It’s a lose-lose situation for British families and we shouldn’t risk it.”

Osborne added that having himself overseen six years of austerity and spending cuts at chancellor, he was “spelling out what [leaving] means for people’s lives”, describing it as “self-imposed austerity”.

What happened:

Osborne was never able to pass his emergency budget as he was sacked by Theresa May when she became prime minister on 13 July 2016. His successor, Philip Hammond, then told The Guardian there would be no emergency budget and the autumn statement would be delivered “as normal”.

In 2017, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Paul Johnson said Osborne’s threat of an emergency budget was “ludicrous” and “undermined” the economic arguments for staying in Europe.

And former Head of the Home Civil Service Lord Kerslake issued a damning report into the Treasury in February 2017 which said its bleak forecasts were met with an “unprecedentedly hostile” reaction by the public, adding that “the standing and credibility of the Treasury was damaged by the widespread rejection of its warnings”.

Leave claimed:

Liam Fox, then secretary of state for international trade, claimed that coming to a free trade agreement with the EU would be “one of the easiest in human history” because the UK’s rules and laws “are already exactly the same”, during an apperance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

It echoed comments made by Michael Gove in a speech at the Vote Leave headquarter in 2016 when he claimed: “The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.”

What happened:

What followed the Brexit vote was four and a half years of wrangling that would bring down a prime minister and see the UK come perilously close to leaving the bloc without a deal at all.

Gove’s analysis was “spectacularly wrong”, PoliticsHome says, as Brexit would come to entirely dominate the political agenda with parliament “mired in round after round of crunch votes, Commons high jinks, legal challenges and down-to-the-wire summits with the EU”.

Theresa May was unable to have even the Withdrawal Agreement she had negotiated with Brussels – an agreement on how the UK would leave the bloc – passed by parliament, eventually stepping down as prime minister in July 2019 after her deal was rejected by MPs for the third time.

In the end, it would be Johnson who would succeed in renegotiating a divorce deal with the EU, although at the expense of making serious concessions over Northern Ireland.

Johnson would eventually clinch a deal with the EU in December 2020, “culminating in haggling on Christmas Eve over fishing rights” after nine months of negotiations with the bloc, reported the Financial Times.

It guaranteed tariff-free trade on most goods, and created a platform for future cooperation on issues such as crime-fighting, energy and data sharing. But it “did not come close to replicating Britain’s existing trade relationship with the EU”, said the paper.

Labour leader Keir Starmer criticised it as a “thin agreement" that the party reluctantly accepted as the only choice between “this deal or no deal”.

And British voters only have “limited enthusiasm” for the deal, with only one in five describing it as a “good” deal, according to a survey conducted by polling expert Sir John Curtice.

Honourable mentions

One of the most controversial claims made by the Leave campaign was that Turkey was set to join the EU. A memorable poster from the Vote Leave campaign showed an open door made from a UK passport alongside the phrase: “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”.

The prospects of the country joining the EU are further away than ever, with the EU Commission stating in 2020 that its concerns over the “rule of law, fundamental rights and the judiciary have not been credibly addressed”.

And finally – who could forget Vote Leave’s notorious red Brexit battle bus, which claimed the UK sent £350 million a week to the EU. It was money that could have been spent on the NHS, the campaign claimed.

In reality, the £350 million figure was the gross sum sent to the EU and did not take into account a £74 million a week rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher or money received by the UK in return for EU-funded programmes, according to PoliticsHome.

The real figure was closer to £230m, significantly lower than the infamous battle bus alleged and less than May would invest into the NHS when she increased its funding in January 2019.