Brexit Gold Silver Coin Britannia Boris Johnson Autograph Card Flags Map Retro

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Seller: Top-Rated Seller anddownthewaterfall ✉️ (33,567) 99.8%, Location: Manchester, GB, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 315255021720 Brexit Gold Silver Coin Britannia Boris Johnson Autograph Card Flags Map Retro. Brexit Commemorative Coin with Boris Johnson Autograph Card This is a Silver & Gold Plated coin to  commemorate Brexit when Britain left the European Union Front has a map of the UK with the Union Jack Flag and Europe with the EU Flag with the words "Brexit UK EU Referendum 23 June 2016" The back has an image of Britannia with both the Union Jack and the EU Flag Also included is a Photo card of Boris Signing the Withdrawal agreement plus the back has a agreement with Bo Jos signature The coin is 40mm in diameter, weighs about  1 oz The card is the size of a standard business card 55mm x 85mm Comes in air-tight acrylic coin holder. A Beautiful coin and Magnificent Keepsake Souvenir to Mark the Exit of the United Kingdom from the EU.  A Very Special Day in the UKs History In Excellent Condition Sorry about the poor quality photos. They dont do the coin justice which looks a lot better in real life Like all my Auctions...Bidding Starts at 1p..With No Resever Would make an Excellent Present or Collectable Keepsake souvineer of a truelly great and remarkable lady
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Great Britain Geography Location North-western Europe Coordinates 54°N 2°W Archipelago British Isles Adjacent to Atlantic Ocean Area 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi)[1] Area rank 9th Highest elevation 1,345 m (4413 ft) Highest point Ben Nevis[2] Administration United Kingdom Countries England Scotland Wales Largest city London (pop. 8,878,892) Demographics Population 60,800,000 (2011 census)[3] Population rank 3rd Pop. density 302/km2 (782/sq mi) Languages EnglishScotsWelshScottish GaelicCornish Ethnic groups 86.8% White 7.1% Asian 3.1% Black 2.0% Mixed 0.3% Arab 0.6% Other[4][5] Additional information Time zone Greenwich Mean Time (UTC)  • Summer (DST) British Summer Time (UTC+1) Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of England, Scotland and Wales. With an area of 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world.[6][note 1] It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The island of Ireland, with an area 40 per cent that of Great Britain, is to the west—these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks, form the British Isles archipelago.[8] Connected to mainland Europe until 9,000 years ago by a landbridge now known as Doggerland,[9] Great Britain has been inhabited by modern humans for around 30,000 years. In 2011, it had a population of about 61 million, making it the world's third-most-populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan,[10][11] and the most populated island outside of Asia. The term "Great Britain" can also refer to the political territory of England, Scotland and Wales, which includes their offshore islands.[12] This territory and Northern Ireland constitute the United Kingdom.[13] The single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the 1707 Acts of Union between the kingdoms of England (which at the time incorporated Wales) and Scotland. Terminology See also: Terminology of the British Isles Toponymy Main article: Britain (place name) The archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over 2000 years: the term 'British Isles' derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe this island group. By 50 BC, Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles.[14] However, with the Roman conquest of Britain, the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia.[15][16][17] The earliest known name for Great Britain is Albion (Greek: Ἀλβιών) or insula Albionum, from either the Latin albus meaning "white" (possibly referring to the white cliffs of Dover, the first view of Britain from the continent) or the "island of the Albiones".[18] The oldest mention of terms related to Great Britain was by Aristotle (384–322 BC), or possibly by Pseudo-Aristotle, in his text On the Universe, Vol. III. To quote his works, "There are two very large islands in it, called the British Isles, Albion and Ierne".[19] Greek geographer, Pytheas of Massalia The first known written use of the word Britain was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original Proto-Celtic term in a work on the travels and discoveries of Pytheas that has not survived. The earliest existing records of the word are quotations of the periplus by later authors, such as those within Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and Diodorus of Sicily's Bibliotheca historica.[20] Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) in his Natural History records of Great Britain: "Its former name was Albion; but at a later period, all the islands, of which we shall just now briefly make mention, were included under the name of 'Britanniæ.'"[21] The name Britain descends from the Latin name for Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons.[22] Old French Bretaigne (whence also Modern French Bretagne) and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond). Britannia was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. It is derived from the travel writings of Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far north as Thule (probably Norway). The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοί, Priteni or Pretani.[18] Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, Britain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic-speaking inhabitants of Ireland.[23] The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans. Greek historians Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo preserved variants of Prettanike from the work of Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who travelled from his home in Hellenistic southern Gaul to Britain in the 4th century BC. The term used by Pytheas may derive from a Celtic word meaning "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" in reference to body decorations.[24] According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē, which is treated a feminine noun.[25][26][27][28] Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, described the island group as αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι (the Prettanic Isles).[29] Derivation of Great A 1490 Italian reconstruction of the relevant map of Ptolemy who combined the lines of roads and of the coasting expeditions during the first century of Roman occupation. Two great faults, however, are an eastward-projecting Scotland and none of Ireland seen to be at the same latitude of Wales, which may have been if Ptolemy used Pytheas' measurements of latitude.[30] Whether he did so is a much debated issue. This "copy" appears in blue below. The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain (μεγάλη Βρεττανία megale Brettania) and to Ireland as little Britain (μικρὰ Βρεττανία mikra Brettania) in his work Almagest (147–148 AD).[31] In his later work, Geography (c. 150 AD), he gave the islands the names Alwion, Iwernia, and Mona (the Isle of Man),[32] suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest.[33] The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island.[18] After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) refers to the island of Great Britain as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany and had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by Celtic Briton migrants from Great Britain.[citation needed] The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily, daughter of Edward IV of England, and James, son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee". The Scottish philosopher and historian, John Major (Mair), published his 'History of Great Britain, both England and Scotland' (Historia majoris Britanniae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae) in 1521. While promoting a possible royal match in 1548, Lord Protector Somerset said that the English and Scots were, "like as twoo brethren of one Islande of great Britaynes again." In 1604, James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland".[34] Modern use of the term Great Britain Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain. Politically, it may refer to the whole of England, Scotland and Wales, including their smaller offshore islands.[35] It is not technically correct to use the term to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom which includes Northern Ireland, though the Oxford English Dictionary states "...the term is also used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom."[36][37] Similarly, Britain can refer to either all islands in Great Britain, the largest island, or the political grouping of countries.[38] There is no clear distinction, even in government documents: the UK government yearbooks have used both Britain[39] and United Kingdom.[40] GB and GBR are used instead of UK in some international codes to refer to the United Kingdom, including the Universal Postal Union, international sports teams, NATO, and the International Organization for Standardization country codes ISO 3166-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, whilst the aircraft registration prefix is G. On the Internet, .uk is the country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. A .gb top-level domain was used to a limited extent, but is now deprecated; although existing registrations still exist (mainly by government organizations and email providers), the domain name registrar will not take new registrations. In the Olympics, Team GB is used by the British Olympic Association to represent the British Olympic team. The Olympic Federation of Ireland represents the whole island of Ireland, and Northern Irish sportspeople may choose to compete for either team,[41] most choosing to represent Ireland.[42] Political definition Political definition of Great Britain (dark green)  – in Europe (green & dark grey)  – in the United Kingdom (green) Politically, Great Britain refers to the whole of England, Scotland and Wales in combination,[43] but not Northern Ireland; it includes islands, such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland, that are part of England, Wales, or Scotland. It does not include the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.[43][44] The political union that joined the kingdoms of England and Scotland happened in 1707 when the Acts of Union ratified the 1706 Treaty of Union and merged the parliaments of the two nations, forming the Kingdom of Great Britain, which covered the entire island. Before this, a personal union had existed between these two countries since the 1603 Union of the Crowns under James VI of Scotland and I of England.[citation needed] History Prehistoric period Main article: Prehistoric Britain Great Britain was probably first inhabited by those who crossed on the land bridge from the European mainland. Human footprints have been found from over 800,000 years ago in Norfolk[45] and traces of early humans have been found (at Boxgrove Quarry, Sussex) from some 500,000 years ago[46] and modern humans from about 30,000 years ago. Until about 16,000 years ago, it was connected to Ireland by only an ice bridge, prior to 9,000 years ago it retained a land connection to the continent, with an area of mostly low marshland joining it to what are now Denmark and the Netherlands.[47][48] In Cheddar Gorge, near Bristol, the remains of animal species native to mainland Europe such as antelopes, brown bears, and wild horses have been found alongside a human skeleton, 'Cheddar Man', dated to about 7150 BC.[49] Great Britain became an island at the end of the last glacial period when sea levels rose due to the combination of melting glaciers and the subsequent isostatic rebound of the crust. Great Britain's Iron Age inhabitants are known as Britons; they spoke Celtic languages. Roman and medieval period Main articles: Roman Britain, Medieval England, Medieval Scotland, and Medieval Wales Ptolomy's historical map of Roman Britain Prima Europe tabula. A copy of Ptolemy's 2nd-century map of Roman Britain. See notes to image above. The Romans conquered most of the island (up to Hadrian's Wall in northern England) and this became the Ancient Roman province of Britannia. In the course of the 500 years after the Roman Empire fell, the Britons of the south and east of the island were assimilated or displaced by invading Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, often referred to collectively as Anglo-Saxons). At about the same time, Gaelic tribes from Ireland invaded the north-west, absorbing both the Picts and Britons of northern Britain, eventually forming the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. The south-east of Scotland was colonised by the Angles and formed, until 1018, a part of the Kingdom of Northumbria. Ultimately, the population of south-east Britain came to be referred to as the English people, so-named after the Angles. Germanic speakers referred to Britons as Welsh. This term came to be applied exclusively to the inhabitants of what is now Wales, but it also survives in names such as Wallace and in the second syllable of Cornwall. Cymry, a name the Britons used to describe themselves, is similarly restricted in modern Welsh to people from Wales, but also survives in English in the place name of Cumbria. The Britons living in the areas now known as Wales, Cumbria and Cornwall were not assimilated by the Germanic tribes, a fact reflected in the survival of Celtic languages in these areas into more recent times.[50] At the time of the Germanic invasion of southern Britain, many Britons emigrated to the area now known as Brittany, where Breton, a Celtic language closely related to Welsh and Cornish and descended from the language of the emigrants, is still spoken. In the 9th century, a series of Danish assaults on northern English kingdoms led to them coming under Danish control (an area known as the Danelaw). In the 10th century, however, all the English kingdoms were unified under one ruler as the kingdom of England when the last constituent kingdom, Northumbria, submitted to Edgar in 959. In 1066, England was conquered by the Normans, who introduced a Norman-speaking administration that was eventually assimilated. Wales came under Anglo-Norman control in 1282, and was officially annexed to England in the 16th century. Early modern period Main article: Early modern Britain Further information: History of the United Kingdom On 20 October 1604 King James, who had succeeded separately to the two thrones of England and Scotland, proclaimed himself "King of Great Brittaine, France, and Ireland".[51] When James died in 1625 and the Privy Council of England was drafting the proclamation of the new king, Charles I, a Scottish peer, Thomas Erskine, 1st Earl of Kellie, succeeded in insisting that it use the phrase "King of Great Britain", which James had preferred, rather than King of Scotland and England (or vice versa).[52] While that title was also used by some of James's successors, England and Scotland each remained legally separate countries, each with its own parliament, until 1707, when each parliament passed an Act of Union to ratify the Treaty of Union that had been agreed the previous year. This created a single kingdom with one parliament with effect from 1 May 1707. The Treaty of Union specified the name of the new all-island state as "Great Britain", while describing it as "One Kingdom" and "the United Kingdom". To most historians, therefore, the all-island state that existed between 1707 and 1800 is either "Great Britain" or the "Kingdom of Great Britain". Geography Further information: Geography of England, Geography of Scotland, and Geography of Wales See also: Geography of the United Kingdom View of Britain's coast from Cap Gris-Nez in northern France Great Britain lies on the European continental shelf, part of the Eurasian Plate and off the north-west coast of continental Europe, separated from this European mainland by the North Sea and by the English Channel, which narrows to 34 km (18 nmi; 21 mi) at the Straits of Dover.[53] It stretches over about ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north–south axis and covers 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi), excluding the much smaller surrounding islands.[54] The North Channel, Irish Sea, St George's Channel and Celtic Sea separate the island from the island of Ireland to its west.[55] The island is since 1993 joined, via one structure, with continental Europe: the Channel Tunnel, the longest undersea rail tunnel in the world. The island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in the western and northern regions. It is surrounded by over 1,000 smaller islands and islets. The greatest distance between two points is 968.0 km (601+1⁄2 mi) (between Land's End, Cornwall and John o' Groats, Caithness), 838 miles (1,349 km) by road. The English Channel is thought to have been created between 450,000 and 180,000 years ago by two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods caused by the breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline, a ridge that held back a large proglacial lake, now submerged under the North Sea.[56] Around 10,000 years ago, during the Devensian glaciation with its lower sea level, Great Britain was not an island, but an upland region of continental north-western Europe, lying partially underneath the Eurasian ice sheet. The sea level was about 120 metres (390 ft) lower than today, and the bed of the North Sea was dry and acted as a land bridge, now known as Doggerland, to the Continent. It is generally thought that as sea levels gradually rose after the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, Doggerland reflooded cutting off what was the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500 BC.[57] Geology Main article: Geology of Great Britain Great Britain has been subject to a variety of plate tectonic processes over a very extended period of time. Changing latitude and sea levels have been important factors in the nature of sedimentary sequences, whilst successive continental collisions have affected its geological structure with major faulting and folding being a legacy of each orogeny (mountain-building period), often associated with volcanic activity and the metamorphism of existing rock sequences. As a result of this eventful geological history, the island shows a rich variety of landscapes. The oldest rocks in Great Britain are the Lewisian gneisses, metamorphic rocks found in the far north west of the island and in the Hebrides (with a few small outcrops elsewhere), which date from at least 2,700 My ago. South of the gneisses are a complex mixture of rocks forming the North West Highlands and Grampian Highlands in Scotland. These are essentially the remains of folded sedimentary rocks that were deposited between 1,000 My and 670 My ago over the gneiss on what was then the floor of the Iapetus Ocean. In the current era the north of the island is rising as a result of the weight of Devensian ice being lifted. Counterbalanced, the south and east is sinking, generally estimated at 1 mm (1⁄25 inch) per year, with the London area sinking at double this partly due to the continuing compaction of the recent clay deposits. Fauna Main article: Fauna of Great Britain European robin on a branch facing left, tan plumage with orange face and throat The robin is popularly known as "Britain's favourite bird".[58] Animal diversity is modest, as a result of factors including the island's small land area, the relatively recent age of the habitats developed since the last glacial period and the island's physical separation from continental Europe, and the effects of seasonal variability.[59] Great Britain also experienced early industrialisation and is subject to continuing urbanisation, which have contributed towards the overall loss of species.[60] A DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) study from 2006 suggested that 100 species have become extinct in the UK during the 20th century, about 100 times the background extinction rate. However, some species, such as the brown rat, red fox, and introduced grey squirrel, are well adapted to urban areas. Rodents make up 40% of the mammal species.[citation needed] These include squirrels, mice, voles, rats and the recently reintroduced European beaver.[60] There is also an abundance of European rabbit, European hare, shrews, European mole and several species of bat.[60] Carnivorous mammals include the red fox, Eurasian badger, Eurasian otter, weasel, stoat and elusive Scottish wildcat.[61] Various species of seal, whale and dolphin are found on or around British shores and coastlines. The largest land-based wild animals today are deer. The red deer is the largest species, with roe deer and fallow deer also prominent; the latter was introduced by the Normans.[61][62] Sika deer and two more species of smaller deer, muntjac and Chinese water deer, have been introduced, muntjac becoming widespread in England and parts of Wales while Chinese water deer are restricted mainly to East Anglia. Habitat loss has affected many species. Extinct large mammals include the brown bear, grey wolf and wild boar; the latter has had a limited reintroduction in recent times.[60] There is a wealth of birdlife, with 628 species recorded,[63] of which 258 breed on the island or remain during winter.[64] Because of its mild winters for its latitude, Great Britain hosts important numbers of many wintering species, particularly waders, ducks, geese and swans.[65] Other well known bird species include the golden eagle, grey heron, common kingfisher, common wood pigeon, house sparrow, European robin, grey partridge, and various species of crow, finch, gull, auk, grouse, owl and falcon.[66] There are six species of reptile on the island; three snakes and three lizards including the legless slowworm. One snake, the adder, is venomous but rarely deadly.[67] Amphibians present are frogs, toads and newts.[60] There are also several introduced species of reptile and amphibian.[68] Flora See also: List of the vascular plants of Britain and Ireland purple heather in meadow showing flower spikes Heather growing wild in the Highlands at Dornoch In a similar sense to fauna, and for similar reasons, the flora consists of fewer species compared to much larger continental Europe.[69] The flora comprises 3,354 vascular plant species, of which 2,297 are native and 1,057 have been introduced.[70] The island has a wide variety of trees, including native species of birch, beech, ash, hawthorn, elm, oak, yew, pine, cherry and apple.[71] Other trees have been naturalised, introduced especially from other parts of Europe (particularly Norway) and North America. Introduced trees include several varieties of pine, chestnut, maple, spruce, sycamore and fir, as well as cherry plum and pear trees.[71] The tallest species are the Douglas firs; two specimens have been recorded measuring 65 metres or 212 feet.[72] The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire is the oldest tree in Europe.[73] There are at least 1,500 different species of wildflower.[74] Some 107 species are particularly rare or vulnerable and are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. It is illegal to uproot any wildflowers without the landowner's permission.[74][75] A vote in 2002 nominated various wildflowers to represent specific counties.[76] These include red poppies, bluebells, daisies, daffodils, rosemary, gorse, iris, ivy, mint, orchids, brambles, thistles, buttercups, primrose, thyme, tulips, violets, cowslip, heather and many more.[77][78][79][80] There is also more than 1000 species of bryophyte including algae and mosses across the island. The currently known species include 767 mosses, 298 liverworts and 4 hornworts.[81] Fungi There are many species of fungi including lichen-forming species, and the mycobiota is less poorly known than in many other parts of the world. The most recent checklist of Basidiomycota (bracket fungi, jelly fungi, mushrooms and toadstools, puffballs, rusts and smuts), published in 2005, accepts over 3600 species.[82] The most recent checklist of Ascomycota (cup fungi and their allies, including most lichen-forming fungi), published in 1985, accepts another 5100 species.[83] These two lists did not include conidial fungi (fungi mostly with affinities in the Ascomycota but known only in their asexual state) or any of the other main fungal groups (Chytridiomycota, Glomeromycota and Zygomycota). The number of fungal species known very probably exceeds 10,000. There is widespread agreement among mycologists that many others are yet to be discovered. Demographics Main article: Demographics of the United Kingdom Settlements London is the capital of England and the whole of the United Kingdom, and is the seat of the United Kingdom's government. Edinburgh and Cardiff are the capitals of Scotland and Wales, respectively, and house their devolved governments. Largest urban areas See also: List of urban areas in the United Kingdom Rank City-region Built-up area[84] Population (2011 Census) Area (km2) Density (people/km2) 1 London Greater London 9,787,426 1,737.9 5,630 2 Manchester–Salford Greater Manchester 2,553,379 630.3 4,051 3 Birmingham–Wolverhampton West Midlands 2,440,986 598.9 4,076 4 Leeds–Bradford West Yorkshire 1,777,934 487.8 3,645 5 Glasgow Greater Glasgow 1,209,143 368.5 3,390 6 Liverpool Liverpool 864,122 199.6 4,329 7 Southampton–Portsmouth South Hampshire 855,569 192.0 4,455 8 Newcastle upon Tyne–Sunderland Tyneside 774,891 180.5 4,292 9 Nottingham Nottingham 729,977 176.4 4,139 10 Sheffield Sheffield 685,368 167.5 4,092 Language Further information: Languages of England, Languages of Scotland, and Languages of Wales See also: Languages of the United Kingdom In the Late Bronze Age, Britain was part of a culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age, held together by maritime trading, which also included Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal. In contrast to the generally accepted view[85] that Celtic originated in the context of the Hallstatt culture, since 2009, John T. Koch and others have proposed that the origins of the Celtic languages are to be sought in Bronze Age Western Europe, especially the Iberian Peninsula.[86][87][88][89] Koch et al.'s proposal has failed to find wide acceptance among experts on the Celtic languages.[85] All the modern Brythonic languages (Breton, Cornish, Welsh) are generally considered to derive from a common ancestral language termed Brittonic, British, Common Brythonic, Old Brythonic or Proto-Brythonic, which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century AD.[90] Brythonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion at least in the majority of Great Britain south of the rivers Forth and Clyde, though the Isle of Man later had a Goidelic language, Manx. Northern Scotland mainly spoke Pritennic, which became Pictish, which may have been a Brythonic language. During the period of the Roman occupation of Southern Britain (AD 43 to c. 410), Common Brythonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words. Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brythonic languages. Romano-British is the name for the Latinised form of the language used by Roman authors. British English is spoken in the present day across the island, and developed from the Old English brought to the island by Anglo-Saxon settlers from the mid 5th century. Some 1.5 million people speak Scots—which was indigenous language of Scotland and has become closer to English over centuries.[91][92] An estimated 700,000 people speak Welsh,[93] an official language in Wales.[94] In parts of north west Scotland, Scottish Gaelic remains widely spoken. There are various regional dialects of English, and numerous languages spoken by some immigrant populations. Religion Further information: Religion in England, Religion in Scotland, and Religion in Wales See also: Religion in the United Kingdom stone cathedral oblique view showing two west towers and central tower Canterbury Cathedral, seat of the Church of England – the island's largest denomination Christianity has been the largest religion by number of adherents since the Early Middle Ages: it was introduced under the ancient Romans, developing as Celtic Christianity. According to tradition, Christianity arrived in the 1st or 2nd century. The most popular form is Anglicanism (known as Episcopalism in Scotland). Dating from the 16th-century Reformation, it regards itself as both Catholic and Reformed. The Head of the Church is the monarch of the United Kingdom, as the Supreme Governor. It has the status of established church in England. There are just over 26 million adherents to Anglicanism in Britain today,[95] although only around one million regularly attend services. The second largest Christian practice is the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, which traces its history to the 6th century with Augustine of Canterbury and the Gregorian mission. It was the main religion for around a thousand years. There are over 5 million adherents today, 4.5 million Catholics in England and Wales[96] and 750,000 in Scotland,[97] although fewer than a million Catholics regularly attend mass.[98] black weathered stone cathedral showing west front stained glass window Glasgow Cathedral, a meeting place of the Church of Scotland The Church of Scotland, a form of Protestantism with a Presbyterian system of ecclesiastical polity, is the third most numerous on the island with around 2.1 million members.[99] Introduced in Scotland by clergyman John Knox, it has the status of national church in Scotland. The monarch of the United Kingdom is represented by a Lord High Commissioner. Methodism is the fourth largest and grew out of Anglicanism through John Wesley.[100] It gained popularity in the old mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, also amongst tin miners in Cornwall.[101] The Presbyterian Church of Wales, which follows Calvinistic Methodism, is the largest denomination in Wales. There are other non-conformist minorities, such as Baptists, Quakers, the United Reformed Church (a union of Congregationalists and English Presbyterians), Unitarians.[102] The first patron saint of Great Britain was Saint Alban.[103] He was the first Christian martyr dating from the Romano-British period, condemned to death for his faith and sacrificed to the pagan gods.[104] In more recent times, some have suggested the adoption of St Aidan as another patron saint of Britain.[105] From Ireland, he worked at Iona amongst the Dál Riata and then Lindisfarne where he restored Christianity to Northumbria.[105] The three constituent countries of the United Kingdom have patron saints: Saint George and Saint Andrew are represented in the flags of England and Scotland respectively.[106] These two flags combined to form the basis of the Great Britain royal flag of 1604.[106] Saint David is the patron saint of Wales.[107] There are many other British saints. Some of the best known are Cuthbert, Columba, Patrick, Margaret, Edward the Confessor, Mungo, Thomas More, Petroc, Bede, and Thomas Becket.[107] Numerous other religions are practised.[108] The 2011 census recorded that Islam had around 2.7 million adherents (excluding Scotland with about 76,000).[109] More than 1.4 million people (excluding Scotland's about 38,000) believe in Hinduism, Sikhism, or Buddhism—religions that developed in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.[109] Judaism figured slightly more than Buddhism at the 2011 census, having 263,000 adherents (excluding Scotland's about 6000).[109] Jews have inhabited Britain since 1070. However, those resident and open about their religion were expelled from England in 1290, replicated in some other Catholic countries of the era. Jews were permitted to re-establish settlement as of 1656, in the interregnum which was a peak of anti-Catholicism.[110] Most Jews in Great Britain have ancestors who fled for their lives, particularly from 19th century Lithuania and the territories occupied by Nazi Germany.[111] Great Britain at Wikipedia's sister projects Definitions from Wiktionary Media from Commons News from Wikinews Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Textbooks from Wikibooks Resources from Wikiversity Coast – the BBC explores the coast of Great Britain. The British Isles 200 major towns and cities in the British Isles Video links Pathe travelogue, 1960, Journey through Britain Archived 4 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine Pathe newsreel, 1960, Know the British Archived 4 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine Pathe newsreel, 1950, Festival of Britain Archived 5 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine vte British Isles NamesTerminology AlbaAlbionCymruPrydainBritainÉireHibernia Politics Sovereign states IrelandUnited Kingdom (EnglandNorthern IrelandScotlandWales) Crown Dependencies Bailiwick of GuernseyJerseyIsle of Man Political cooperation Ireland–United Kingdom relationsBritish–Irish CouncilBritish–Irish Intergovernmental ConferenceBritish–Irish Parliamentary AssemblyCommon Travel Area Geography Island groups Channel IslandsIslands of the ClydeGreat BritainHebrides InnerOuterIrelandIsle of ManNorthern Isles OrkneyShetlandIsles of Scilly Lists of islands of Bailiwick of GuernseyIrelandBailiwick of JerseyIsle of ManUnited Kingdom EnglandScotlandWales History (outline) Island groups Ireland Current states IrelandUnited Kingdom EnglandNorthern IrelandScotlandWalesGuernseyJerseyIsle of Man Former states Irish Free StateKingdom of England Principality of WalesKingdom of Great BritainKingdom of IrelandKingdom of ScotlandUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Society Modern languages Germanic EnglishScots Celtic CornishScottish GaelicIrishManxWelsh Romance AuregnaisFrenchGuernésiaisJèrriaisSercquiais Other British Sign LanguageIrish Sign LanguageNorthern Ireland Sign LanguageShelta People BritishCornishEnglishEnglish GypsiesIrishIrish TravellersKaleManxNorthern IrishScottishUlster-ScotsWelsh vte United Kingdom articles History Chronology FormationGeorgian eraVictorian eraEdwardian eraFirst World WarInterwarSecond World War civilianmilitaryPostwar politicalsocialSince 1979 politicalsocial By topic EconomicEmpireForeign relations 1814–1919Law enforcementMaritimeMass surveillanceMilitaryTaxationWomen's history Geography Administrative Counties of the United KingdomCountries of the United KingdomCrown DependenciesOverseas territoriesCity statusTownsFormer colonies Physical British Isles terminologyGreat BritainClimate changeCoastlineGeologyLakes and lochsMountainsRiversVolcanoes Resources AgricultureEnergy biodieselcoalgeothermalhydraulic frac.hydroelectricitymarineNorth Sea oilRenewable energysolarwindFishing EnglishScottishWelshHuntingMaterials forestryminingWildlife faunaflora Politics ConstitutionCorruptionDevolutionElections By-electionsForeign relationsHuman rights LGBTJudiciaryLawLaw enforcementLocal governmentMonarchy monarchsrepublicanismNationalityParliament House of CommonsHouse of LordsPolitical partiesFemale party leadersPolitical scandalsShadow Cabinet Government Cabinet listCivil serviceDepartmentsMinisters listPrime Minister list Military His Majesty's Naval ServiceBritish ArmyRoyal Air ForceWeapons of mass destruction Economy Banks Bank of EnglandBudgetEconomic geographyFree trade agreementsIncomeManufacturingPound sterling (currency)Science and technologyStock exchanges (London Exchange)TaxationTelecommunicationsTourism Transport Air transportBus transportDrivingRoadsRail transport Society CannabisCrimeDemographyDrug policyEducationEnvironmental inequalityEnvironmental issuesEthnic groupsHealthHomelessness EnglandScotlandHousingHungerImmigrationInnovationLanguagesLife expectancyMental healthPovertyProstitutionPublic holidaysRacismSocial careSocial classSuicideUniversal basic income (UBI)Water supply and sanitationWasteWelfare state Culture ArtAnthemCinemaCuisine WineIdentityLiteratureMediaMusicReligionSportSymbolsTheatreStereotypes of the BritishWorld Heritage SitesAnglosphere Countries of the United Kingdom OutlineIndex CategoryPortal vte World's largest islands 100,000 km2 (38,610 sq mi) and greater GreenlandNew GuineaBorneoMadagascarBaffin IslandSumatraHonshuVictoria Island (Canada)Great BritainEllesmere IslandSulawesiSouth IslandJavaNorth IslandLuzonNewfoundlandCubaIceland icon Islands portal 20,000–99,999 km2 (7,722–38,610 sq mi) MindanaoIrelandHokkaidoHispaniolaSakhalinBanks IslandSri LankaTasmaniaDevon IslandAlexander IslandSeverny IslandIsla Grande de Tierra del FuegoAxel Heiberg IslandMelville IslandSouthampton IslandMarajóSpitsbergenKyushuTaiwanNew BritainPrince of Wales IslandYuzhny IslandHainanVancouver IslandTimorSicilySomerset IslandKotelny IslandSardiniaBananal Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata International WorldCat Other NARAIdRef Categories: Great BritainBritish IslesMetropolitan or continental parts of states Who is Britannia? Everyone knows that she 'rules the waves', she is on the 50p and £2 coins we use every day, and there was a time in the 1990s when she really was cool, but who is Britannia? Armed with a trident and shield, and wearing a Corinthian helmet, Britannia is the embodiment of the United Kingdom in female form. The image of this woman has been used to symbolise British national pride, unity and strength for centuries. In older times, Britannia’s strength was particularly associated with British naval power. As the song goes: Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves. Britons never, never, never shall be slaves. Britannia costume at the Hastings bonfire procession. Britannia is established in popular culture, as depicted here at the Hastings annual Bonfire procession. The birth of Britannia Britannia is typically associated with Queen Boudica or Boadicea; the Celtic Iceni ruler who led a revolt against the rule of the Roman empire. The symbolic figure of Britannia actually predates Boadicea however, to the time when the Romans first occupied land in the British Isles. The icon was imported into Great Britain with the Roman conquest, and is based on the Roman goddess Minerva; the sponsor of arts, trade, strategy, and wisdom. Minerva was herself the Roman appropriation of the goddess Athena, with similarities seen between other deities such as the Egyptian Goddess of the Water, Bairthy. Bronze Etruscan statue. An Etruscan bronze statue of the Roman goddess Minerva, whom Britannia was based upon. The name Britannia is derived from the Latin ‘Britannicae’ , which the Romans used in reference to the British Isles. This was in turn derived from the Greek form ‘Prettanike’ or ‘Brettaniai’ . The inhabitants were named ‘Britanni’ or ‘Britons’ . To this day ‘Prydain’ , from the Greek, is the Welsh translation of Britannia. It was Emperor Julius Caesar who led the conquest of the British Isles. However, when the Emperor Claudius came to Britain he was portrayed as its conqueror. Following this, 'Britannicus' was added to his name. As the overseas and furthest territory of the Roman Empire, it soon became identified with the goddess of warfare and water. Thus, the Roman goddess Minerva became Britannia, and the personification of the British Isles. After the fall of the Roman Empire, England was invaded by the Anglo-Saxons. The original Celtic Britons withdrew to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Breton in France. They took with them the heritage of the iconic woman, which was for the time lost from England. A map showing the changing perception of Britannia. In the 16th and 17th century, under Queen Elizabeth I, England extended its naval power and successfully defeated a Spanish invasion. This, combined with a female monarch and growing national confidence, saw a return of Britannia as an image of the English nation's strength. The Act of Union in 1707 united Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. This gave further credence to the female imagery as an inclusive symbol of unity to the four nations. The final assertion of Britannia as the symbol British power came in the reign of another female sovereign, Queen Victoria. The power of British industry and naval strength saw Britannia become the ultimate symbol of Victoria's growing British Empire. Who is Britannia on coins? After the Ancient Romans established the link between their far flung territories and the goddess, it became common to see Britannia on the Roman British coins. Britannia has therefore been a feature of British coins now for almost 2,000 years! Roman coin showing Britannia on the reverse. Roman Siliqua coin depicting Britannia on the reverse or tails. In A.D. 122, following the expansion of Roman territory, Emperor Hadrian spent time in Britain. Coins were struck to commemorate his visit, including the bronze Sestertius and Siliqua, which featured an image and inscription of Britannia on the reverse. Further coins featuring Britannia were later minted under Antoninus Pius AD 138-160, in bronze and gold with the inscription IMPERATOR II BRITAN. The female icon on coins departed with the Romans until reappearing 1672. In this year, Charles II chose to reintroduce Britannia onto his coinage. Britannia is depicted on Charles II's copper Halfpennies and Farthings, similar to the Roman coins. However, on these coins she also holds a shield bearing the Union flag in a more nationalist display. A 1797 penny featuring Britannia sitting down. A 1797 penny featuring Britannia, which because of its size was nicknamed the ‘Cartwheel penny’. Since reintroduction, Britannia has continued to feature on various UK common currency coins. Most notably she featured on Farthings, Halfpenny and one Penny coins following the Great Recoinage of 1816. Today, following decimalisation in 1971, Britannia features on circulating 50p and £2 coins. A 2015 £2 coin featuring a redesigned image of Britannia. The 2015 common currency £2 coin featured a reworking of the classic image by Antony Dufort. Gold Britannia coins For many UK investors however, Britannia is best known as the flagship bullion coin of Britain. In 1987, to satisfy a growing demand for bullion coins from both coin collectors and investors, The Royal Mint introduced the gold Britannia coins. These contain one ounce of 24 carat gold (since 2013), and have a face value of £100. Along with the 22 carat Sovereign, they are the UK's leading bullion coins and the first choice of many investors. As UK legal tender, gold coins such as the Britannia are exempt from Capital Gains Tax. Additionally, all investment gold in the UK and EU is VAT-free. This combines to make the gold coin an attractive financial safe haven investment. The 1987 Britannia proved a great success and The Royal Mint went on to strike half, quarter and tenth ounce coins. In 1997 The Royal Mint also added a silver Britannia coin, with a £2 face value, which has become the most popular silver coin for investment purposes. Buying Gold Britannia coins The design of the Britannia coin has remained largely the same, but there have been unique releases on occasion. BullionByPost sells gold Britannia bullion coins at low premiums including free, fully insured delivery. For those seeking the very lowest prices choose our best value mixed year coins; this will give you the best way to buy a Britannia. For coin collectors or numismatics, we also offer the exact year of Britannia plus other coins feature the iconic figure. 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum     Article     Talk     Read     Edit     View history Tools From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article's lead section may be too long. Please read the length guidelines and help move details into the article's body. (November 2023) 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum 23 June 2016 Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? Results Choice Votes % Leave 17,410,742 51.89% Remain 16,141,241 48.11% Valid votes 33,551,983 99.92% Invalid or blank votes 25,359 0.08% Total votes 33,577,342 100.00% Registered voters/turnout 46,500,001 72.21% Results by local voting area Leave:      50–60%      60–70%      70-80% Remain:      50–60%      60–70%      70-80%      90-100% On the map, the darker shades for a colour indicate a larger margin. The electorate of 46.5m represents 70.8% of the population. National and regional referendums held within the United Kingdom and its constituent countries Northern Ireland border poll     1973 EC membership referendum     1975 Scottish devolution referendum     1979 Welsh devolution referendum     1979 Scottish devolution referendum     1997 Welsh devolution referendum     1997 Greater London Authority referendum     1998 NI Good Friday Agreement referendum     1998 NE England devolution referendum     2004 Welsh devolution referendum     2011 Alternative Vote referendum     2011 Scottish independence referendum     2014 EU membership referendum     2016     * UK-wide referendums in bold         vte Part of a series of articles on Brexit Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union Glossary of terms Background     European Communities Act     1975 EC membership referendum     UK rebate     Bruges speech     No. No. No.     Maastricht Rebels     Black Wednesday     European Union (Amendment) Act 2008     European Union Act 2011     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Scottish Continuity Bill blocked Dec 2018 Meaningful votes Jan–Mar 2019 Brexit delayed until 12 April Mar 2019 Cooper–Letwin Act passed Apr 2019 Brexit delayed until 31 October Apr 2019 European Parliament election May 2019 Theresa May resigns as PM Jul 2019 Boris Johnson becomes PM Jul 2019 Prorogation and annulment Aug–Sep 2019 Benn Act passed Sep 2019 Withdrawal agreement revised Oct 2019 Brexit delayed until 31 January Oct 2019 2019 general election Dec 2019 Agreement Act passed Jan 2020 UK leaves the European Union Jan 2020 Implementation period begins Jan 2020 UK–EU trade deal agreed Dec 2020 Future Relationship Act passed Dec 2020 Scottish Continuity Act passed Dec 2020 Implementation period ends Dec 2020 New EU–UK relationship begins Jan 2021 UK–EU trade deal ratified Apr 2021 Windsor Framework released Feb 2023 Windsor framework adopted Mar 2023     flag EU portal flag UK portal     vte National and regional referendums held within the United Kingdom and its constituent 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The referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU, triggering calls to begin the process of the country's withdrawal from the EU commonly termed "Brexit". Since 1 January 1973 the United Kingdom had been a member state of the EU and its predecessor the European Economic Community, along with other international bodies. Since joining, the constitutional implications for the UK had been a topic of debate domestically. A referendum on continued membership of the Communities to try and settle the issue was held in 1975, with 67.2% of the votes cast in favour of the UK remaining a member.[1] Between 1975 and 2016 as European integration deepened, subsequent EC/EU treaties and agreements were ratified by the UK Parliament. Following the surprise Conservative Party victory at the 2015 general election as a main manifesto pledge, the legal basis for the EU referendum was established through the European Union Referendum Act 2015. Prime minister David Cameron also oversaw a renegotiation of the terms of EU membership, intending to implement these changes in the event of a Remain result. The referendum was legally non-binding due to the ancient principle of parliamentary sovereignty, although the government promised to implement the result.[2] Campaigning officially took place between 15 April and 23 June 2016.- The official group for remaining in the EU was Britain Stronger in Europe while Vote Leave was the official group endorsing leaving.[3] Other campaign groups, political parties, businesses, trade unions, newspapers and prominent individuals were also involved, with both sides having supporters from across the political spectrum. Parties in favour of 'remain' included Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru and the Green Party;[4][5][6][7] while the UK Independence Party (UKIP) campaigned in favour of leaving the European Union;[8] and the Conservative Party remained neutral.[9] In spite of the official positions of the Conservative Party and Labour, both parties allowed their MPs to publicly campaign for either side of the issue.[10][11] Issues during campaigning included the costs and benefits of membership for the UK's economy, freedom of movement and migration. Several allegations of unlawful campaigning and Russian interference arose during and after the referendum. The results were that most areas of the UK had a majority for Leave, with the exception of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Greater London and Gibraltar, where the majority of voters chose Remain. Voter preference correlated with age, level of education and socioeconomic factors. The causes and reasoning of the Leave result have been the subject of analysis and commentary. Immediately after the result, financial markets reacted negatively worldwide and Cameron announced that he would resign as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron was succeeded by Theresa May on 13 July 2016. The referendum prompted a wide array of reactions internationally. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also faced a leadership challenge as a result of the EU referendum. On 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom gave formal notice of intent to withdraw from the EU, with the withdrawal being formalised on 31 January 2020. Background Further information: Accession of the United Kingdom to the European Communities, European Communities Act 1972 (UK), and European Union Act 2011 The European Communities were formed in the 1950s – the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952, and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) and European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957.[12] The EEC, the more ambitious of the three, came to be known as the "Common Market". The UK first applied to join them in 1961, but this was vetoed by France.[12] A later application was successful, and the UK joined in 1973; two years later, the first ever national referendum on continuing EC membership resulted in 67.2% voting “Yes” in favour of continued membership, on a 64.6% national turnout.[12] However no further referendums on the issue of the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe were held and successive British governments integrated further into the European project which gained focus when the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union (EU) in 1993, which incorporated (and after the Lisbon Treaty, succeeded) the European Communities.[12][13] Growing pressure for a referendum See also: European Union Act 2011 and 2015 United Kingdom general election At the May 2012 NATO summit meeting, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague and Ed Llewellyn discussed the idea of using a European Union referendum as a concession to energise the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party.[14] On 20 June 2012 a three clause private member's bill was introduced into the House of Commons by then Eurosceptic MP Douglas Carswell to end the United Kingdom’s EU membership and repeal the European Communities Act 1972 but without containing any commitment to the holding of any referendum and it received a second reading in a brief half long debate in the chamber which was held on 26 October 2012 however the Bill did not progress any further.[15] Conservative MP James Wharton introduced a Private member's bill to the House of Commons in 2013 committing the UK to holding a referendum on continued EU membership by the end of 2017 which passed all of its stages in the chamber before it was blocked in the House of Lords early in 2014. During the 2015 general election campaign, David Cameron promised to renegotiate the terms of the UK's EU membership and later hold a referendum on the subject if a Conservative majority government was elected. In January 2013, Cameron delivered the Bloomberg speech and promised that, should the Conservatives win a parliamentary majority at the 2015 general election, the British government would negotiate more favourable arrangements for continuing British membership of the EU, before holding a referendum on whether the UK should remain in or leave the EU.[16] The Conservative Party published a draft EU Referendum Bill in May 2013, and outlined its plans for renegotiation followed by an in-out vote (i.e. a referendum giving options only of leaving and of remaining in under the current terms, or under new terms if these had become available), were the party to be re-elected in 2015.[17] The draft Bill stated that the referendum had to be held no later than 31 December 2017.[18] The draft legislation was taken forward as a Private member's bill by Conservative MP James Wharton which was known as the European Union (Referendum) Bill 2013.[19] The bill's First Reading in the House of Commons took place on 19 June 2013.[20] Cameron was said by a spokesperson to be "very pleased" and would ensure the Bill was given "the full support of the Conservative Party".[21] Regarding the ability of the bill to bind the UK Government in the 2015–20 Parliament (which indirectly, as a result of the referendum itself, proved to last only two years) to holding such a referendum, a parliamentary research paper noted that:     The Bill simply provides for a referendum on continued EU membership by the end of December 2017 and does not otherwise specify the timing, other than requiring the Secretary of State to bring forward orders by the end of 2016. [...] If no party obtained a majority at the [next general election due in 2015], there might be some uncertainty about the passage of the orders in the next Parliament.[22] The bill received its Second Reading on 5 July 2013, passing by 304 votes to none after almost all Labour MPs and all Liberal Democrat MPs abstained, cleared the Commons in November 2013, and was then introduced to the House of Lords in December 2013, where members voted to block the bill.[23] Conservative MP Bob Neill then introduced an Alternative Referendum Bill to the Commons.[24][25] After a debate on 17 October 2014, it passed to the Public Bills Committee, but because the Commons failed to pass a money resolution, the bill was unable to progress further before the dissolution of parliament on 27 March 2015.[26][27] At the European Parliament election in 2014, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) secured more votes and more seats than any other party, the first time a party other than the Conservatives or Labour had topped a nationwide poll in 108 years, leaving the Conservatives in third place.[28] Under Ed Miliband's leadership between 2010 and 2015, the Labour Party ruled out an in-out referendum unless and until a further transfer of powers from the UK to the EU were to be proposed.[29] In their manifesto for the 2015 general election, the Liberal Democrats pledged to hold an in-out referendum only in the event of there being a change in the EU treaties.[30] The UK Independence Party (UKIP), the British National Party (BNP), the Green Party,[31] the Democratic Unionist Party[32] and the Respect Party[33] all supported the principle of a referendum. When the Conservative Party won a majority of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election, Cameron reiterated his party's manifesto commitment to hold an in-out referendum on UK membership of the EU by the end of 2017, but only after "negotiating a new settlement for Britain in the EU".[34] Renegotiation before the referendum Main articles: 2015–2016 United Kingdom renegotiation of European Union membership and European Union law In early 2014, David Cameron outlined the changes he aimed to bring about in the EU and in the UK's relationship with it.[35] These were: additional immigration controls, especially for citizens of new EU member states; tougher immigration rules for present EU citizens; new powers for national parliaments collectively to veto proposed EU laws; new free-trade agreements and a reduction in bureaucracy for businesses; a lessening of the influence of the European Court of Human Rights on British police and courts; more power for individual member states, and less for the central EU; and abandonment of the EU notion of "ever closer union".[35] He intended to bring these about during a series of negotiations with other EU leaders and then, if re-elected, to announce a referendum.[35] In November that year, Cameron gave an update on the negotiations and further details of his aims.[36] The key demands made of the EU were: on economic governance, to recognise officially that Eurozone laws would not necessarily apply to non-Eurozone EU members and the latter would not have to bail out troubled Eurozone economies; on competitiveness, to expand the single market and to set a target for the reduction of bureaucracy for businesses; on sovereignty, for the UK to be legally exempted from "ever closer union" and for national parliaments to be able collectively to veto proposed EU laws; and, on immigration, for EU citizens going to the UK for work to be unable to claim social housing or in-work benefits until they had worked there for four years, and for them to be unable to send child benefit payments overseas.[36][37] The outcome of the renegotiations was announced in February 2016.[38] The renegotiated terms were in addition to the United Kingdom's existing opt-outs in the European Union and the UK rebate. The significance of the changes to the EU-UK agreement was contested and speculated upon, with none of the changes considered fundamental, but some considered important to many British people.[38] Some limits to in-work benefits for EU immigrants were agreed, but these would apply on a sliding scale for four years and would be for new immigrants only; before they could be applied, a country would have to get permission from the European Council.[38] Child benefit payments could still be made overseas, but these would be linked to the cost of living in the other country.[39] On sovereignty, the UK was reassured that it would not be required to participate in "ever closer union"; these reassurances were "in line with existing EU law".[38] Cameron's demand to allow national parliaments to veto proposed EU laws was modified to allow national parliaments collectively to object to proposed EU laws, in which case the European Council would reconsider the proposal before itself deciding what to do.[38] On economic governance, anti-discrimination regulations for non-Eurozone members would be reinforced, but they would be unable to veto any legislation.[40] The final two areas covered were proposals to "exclude from the scope of free movement rights, third country nationals who had no prior lawful residence in a Member State before marrying a Union citizen"[41] and to make it easier for member states to deport EU nationals for public policy or public security reasons.[42] The extent to which the various parts of the agreement would be legally binding is complex; no part of the agreement itself changed EU law, but some parts could be enforceable in international law.[43] The EU had reportedly offered David Cameron a so-called "emergency brake", which would have allowed the UK to withhold social benefits to new immigrants for the first four years after they arrived; this brake could have been applied for a period of seven years.[44] That offer was still on the table at the time of the Brexit referendum, but expired when the vote determined that the UK would leave the EU. Cameron claimed that "he could have avoided Brexit had European leaders let him control migration", according to the Financial Times.[45][46] However, Angela Merkel said that the offer had not been made by the EU. Merkel stated in the German Parliament: "If you wish to have free access to the single market then you have to accept the fundamental European rights as well as obligations that come from it. This is as true for Great Britain as for anybody else."[47] Legislation See also: European Union Referendum Act 2015 The planned referendum was included in the Queen's Speech on 27 May 2015.[48] It was suggested at the time that Cameron was planning to hold the referendum in October 2016,[49] but the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which authorised it, went before the House of Commons the following day, just three weeks after the election.[50] On the bill's second reading on 9 June, members of the House of Commons voted by 544 to 53 in favour, endorsing the principle of holding a referendum, with only the Scottish National Party voting against.[51] In contrast to the Labour Party's position prior to the 2015 general election under Miliband, acting Labour leader Harriet Harman committed her party to supporting plans for an EU referendum by 2017, a position maintained by elected leader Jeremy Corbyn.[52] To enable the referendum to take place, the European Union Referendum Act[53] was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It extended to include and take legislative effect in Gibraltar,[54][55] and received royal assent on 17 December 2015. The Act was, in turn, confirmed, enacted and implemented in Gibraltar by the European Union (Referendum) Act 2016 (Gibraltar),[56] which was passed by the Gibraltar Parliament and entered into law upon receiving the assent of the Governor of Gibraltar on 28 January 2016. The European Union Referendum Act required a referendum to be held on the question of the UK's continued membership of the European Union (EU) before the end of 2017. It did not contain any requirement for the UK Government to implement the results of the referendum. Instead, it was designed to gauge the electorate's opinion on EU membership. The referendums held in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1997 and 1998 are examples of this type, where opinion was tested before legislation was introduced. The UK does not have constitutional provisions which would require the results of a referendum to be implemented, unlike, for example, the Republic of Ireland, where the circumstances in which a binding referendum should be held are set out in its constitution. In contrast, the legislation that provided for the referendum held on AV in May 2011 would have implemented the new system of voting without further legislation, provided that the boundary changes also provided for in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 were also implemented. In the event, there was a substantial majority against any change. The 1975 referendum was held after the re-negotiated terms of the UK's EC membership had been agreed by all EC Member States, and the terms set out in a command paper and agreed by both Houses.[57] Following the 2016 referendum, the High Court confirmed that the result was not legally binding, owing to the constitutional principles of parliamentary sovereignty and representative democracy, and the legislation authorising the referendum did not contain clear words to the contrary.[58] Referendum question Sample referendum ballot paper Research by the Electoral Commission confirmed that its recommended question "was clear and straightforward for voters, and was the most neutral wording from the range of options ... considered and tested", citing responses to its consultation by a diverse range of consultees.[59] The proposed question was accepted by the government in September 2015, shortly before the bill's third reading.[60] The question that appeared on ballot papers in the referendum under the Act was:     Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? with the responses to the question (to be marked with a single (X)):     Remain a member of the European Union     Leave the European Union and in Welsh:     A ddylai'r Deyrnas Unedig aros yn aelod o'r Undeb Ewropeaidd neu adael yr Undeb Ewropeaidd? with the responses (to be marked with a single (X)):     Aros yn aelod o'r Undeb Ewropeaidd     Gadael yr Undeb Ewropeaidd Administration Date Prior to being officially announced, it was widely speculated that a June date for the referendum was a serious possibility. The First Ministers of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales co-signed a letter to Cameron on 3 February 2016 asking him not to hold the referendum in June, as devolved elections were scheduled to take place the previous month on 5 May. These elections had been postponed for a year to avoid a clash with the 2015 general election, after Westminster had implemented the Fixed-term Parliament Act. Cameron refused this request, saying people were able to make up their own minds in multiple elections spaced at least six weeks from each other.[61] [62] On 20 February 2016, Cameron announced that the UK Government would formally recommend to the British people that the UK should remain a member of a reformed European Union and that the referendum would be held on 23 June, marking the official launch of the campaign. He also announced that Parliament would enact secondary legislation on 22 February relating to the European Union Referendum Act 2015. With the official launch, ministers of the UK Government were then free to campaign on either side of the argument in a rare exception to Cabinet collective responsibility.[63] Eligibility to vote The right to vote in the referendum in the United Kingdom is defined by the legislation as limited to residents of the United Kingdom who were either also Commonwealth citizens under Section 37 of the British Nationality Act 1981 (which include British citizens and other British nationals), or those who were also citizens of the Republic of Ireland, or both. Members of the House of Lords, who could not vote in general elections, were able to vote in the referendum. The electorate of 46,500,001 represented 70.8% of the population of 65,678,000 (UK and Gibraltar).[64] Other than the residents of Gibraltar, British Overseas Territories Citizens residing in the British Overseas Territories were unable to vote in the referendum.[65][66] Residents of the United Kingdom who were citizens of other EU countries were not allowed to vote unless they were citizens (or were also citizens) of the Republic of Ireland, of Malta, or of the Republic of Cyprus.[67] The Representation of the People Acts 1983 (1983 c. 2) and 1985 (1985 c. 50), as amended, also permit certain British citizens (but not other British nationals), who had once lived in the United Kingdom, but had since and in the meantime lived outside of the United Kingdom, but for a period of no more than 15 years, to vote.[68] Voting on the day of the referendum was from 0700 to 2200 BST (WEST) (0700 to 2200 CEST in Gibraltar) in some 41,000 polling stations staffed by over 100,000 poll workers. Each polling station was specified to have no more than 2,500 registered voters.[citation needed] Under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 2000, postal ballots were also permitted in the referendum and were sent out to eligible voters some three weeks ahead of the vote (2 June 2016). The minimum age for voters in the referendum was set to 18 years, in line with the Representation of the People Act, as amended. A House of Lords amendment proposing to lower the minimum age to 16 years was rejected.[69] The deadline to register to vote was initially midnight on 7 June 2016; however, this was extended by 48 hours owing to technical problems with the official registration website on 7 June, caused by unusually high web traffic. Some supporters of the Leave campaign, including the Conservative MP Sir Gerald Howarth, criticised the government's decision to extend the deadline, alleging it gave Remain an advantage because many late registrants were young people who were considered to be more likely to vote for Remain.[70] According to provisional figures from the Electoral Commission, almost 46.5 million people were eligible to vote.[71] Registration problems Nottingham City Council emailed a Vote Leave supporter to say that the council was unable to check whether the nationality that people stated on their voting registration form was true, and hence that they simply had to assume that the information that was submitted was, indeed, correct.[72] 3,462 EU nationals were wrongly sent postal voting cards, due to an IT issue experienced by Xpress, an electoral software supplier to a number of councils. Xpress was initially unable to confirm the exact number of those affected. The matter was resolved by the issuance of a software patch which rendered the wrongly recorded electors ineligible to vote on 23 June.[72] Crown Dependencies Residents of the Crown Dependencies (which are not part of the United Kingdom), namely the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, even if they were British citizens, were excluded from the referendum unless they were also previous residents of the United Kingdom (that is: England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).[73] Some residents of the Isle of Man protested that they, as full British citizens under the British Nationality Act 1981 and living within the British Islands, should also have been given the opportunity to vote in the referendum, as the Isle and the Bailiwicks, although not included as if they were part of the United Kingdom for the purpose of European Union (and European Economic Area (EEA)) membership (as is the case with Gibraltar), would also have been significantly affected by the outcome and impact of the referendum.[73] Campaign Main article: Campaigning in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum See also: Causes of the vote in favour of Brexit Britain Stronger in Europe campaigners, London, June 2016 Referendum posters for both the Leave and Remain campaigns in Pimlico, London Remain campaign "I'm in" sticker In October 2015, Britain Stronger in Europe, a cross-party group campaigning for Britain to remain a member of the EU, was formed.[74] There were two rival groups promoting British withdrawal from the EU that sought to become the official Leave campaign: Leave.EU (which was endorsed by most of UKIP, including Nigel Farage), and Vote Leave (endorsed by Conservative Party Eurosceptics). In January 2016, Nigel Farage and the Leave.EU campaign became part of the Grassroots Out movement, which was borne out of infighting between Vote Leave and Leave.EU campaigners.[75][76] In April, the Electoral Commission announced that Britain Stronger in Europe and Vote Leave were to be designated as the official remain and leave campaigns respectively.[77] This gave them the right to spend up to £7,000,000, a free mailshot, TV broadcasts and £600,000 in public funds. The UK Government's official position was to support the Remain campaign. Nevertheless, Cameron announced that Conservative Ministers and MPs were free to campaign in favour of remaining in the EU or leaving it, according to their conscience. This decision came after mounting pressure for a free vote for ministers.[78] In an exception to the usual rule of cabinet collective responsibility, Cameron allowed cabinet ministers to campaign publicly for EU withdrawal.[79] A Government-backed campaign was launched in April.[80] On 16 June, all official national campaigning was suspended until 19 June following the murder of Jo Cox.[81] After internal polls suggested that 85% of the UK population wanted more information about the referendum from the government, a leaflet was sent to every household in the UK.[82] It contained details about why the government believed the UK should remain in the EU. This leaflet was criticised by those wanting to leave as giving the remain side an unfair advantage; it was also described as being inaccurate and a waste of taxpayers' money (it cost £9.3m in total).[83] In the week beginning on 16 May, the Electoral Commission sent a voting guide regarding the referendum to every household within the UK and Gibraltar to raise awareness of the upcoming referendum. The eight-page guide contained details on how to vote, as well as a sample of the actual ballot paper, and a whole page each was given to the campaign groups Britain Stronger in Europe and Vote Leave to present their case.[84][85] The Vote Leave campaign argued that if the UK left the EU, national sovereignty would be protected, immigration controls could be imposed, and the UK would be able to sign trade deals with the rest of the world. The UK would also be able to stop membership payments to the EU every week.[86][note 1] The Britain Stronger in Europe campaign argued that leaving the European Union would damage the UK economy, and that the status of the UK as a world influence was hinged upon its membership.[89] Responses to the referendum campaign Party policies In the run up to the referendum, of the 650 MPs elected to the 2015-17 UK Parliament a total of 479 MPs publicly declared their intention to vote in favour of remaining in the European Union compared with just 158 MPs who declared their intention to vote in favour of leaving the European Union.   Leave   Remain The tables list political parties with representation in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Parliament, or the Gibraltar Parliament at the time of the referendum. Great Britain Position Political parties Ref Remain Green Party of England and Wales [90] Labour Party [91][92] Liberal Democrats [93] Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales [94] Scottish Greens [95] Scottish National Party (SNP) [96][97] Leave UK Independence Party (UKIP) [98] Neutral Conservative Party [99] Northern Ireland Position Political parties Ref Remain Alliance Party of Northern Ireland [100][101] Green Party Northern Ireland [102] Sinn Féin [103] Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) [104] Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) [105] Leave Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) [106][107] People Before Profit (PBP) [108] Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) [109] Gibraltar Position Political parties Ref Remain Gibraltar Social Democrats [110] Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party [111] Liberal Party of Gibraltar [111] Minor parties Among minor parties, the Socialist Labour Party, the Communist Party of Britain, Britain First,[112] the British National Party (BNP),[113] Éirígí [Ireland],[114] the Respect Party,[115] the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC),[116] the Social Democratic Party,[117] the Liberal Party,[118] Independence from Europe,[119] and the Workers' Party [Ireland][120] supported leaving the EU. The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), Left Unity and Mebyon Kernow [Cornwall] supported remaining in the EU.[121][122][123] The Socialist Party of Great Britain supported neither leave nor remain and the Women's Equality Party had no official position on the issue.[124][125][126][127] Cabinet ministers For the positions of backbench MPs and other politicians, see Endorsements in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is a body responsible for making decisions on policy and organising governmental departments; it is chaired by the Prime Minister and contains most of the government's ministerial heads.[128] Following the announcement of the referendum in February, 23 of the 30 Cabinet ministers (including attendees) supported the UK staying in the EU.[129] Iain Duncan Smith, in favour of leaving, resigned on 19 March and was replaced by Stephen Crabb who was in favour of remaining.[129][130] Crabb was already a cabinet member, as the Secretary of State for Wales, and his replacement, Alun Cairns, was in favour of remaining, bringing the total number of pro-remain Cabinet members to 25. Business See also: Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum § Business leaders Various UK multinationals have stated that they would not like the UK to leave the EU because of the uncertainty it would cause, such as Shell,[131] BT[132] and Vodafone,[133] with some assessing the pros and cons of Britain exiting.[134] The banking sector was one of the most vocal advocating to stay in the EU, with the British Bankers' Association saying: "Businesses don't like that kind of uncertainty".[135] RBS warned of potential damage to the economy.[136] Furthermore, HSBC and foreign-based banks JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank claim a Brexit might result in the banks' changing domicile.[137][138] According to Goldman Sachs and the City of London's policy chief, all such factors could impact on the City of London's present status as a European and global market leader in financial services.[139] In February 2016, leaders of 36 of the FTSE 100 companies, including Shell, BAE Systems, BT and Rio Tinto, officially supported staying in the EU.[140] Moreover, 60% of the Institute of Directors and the EEF memberships supported staying.[141] Many UK-based businesses, including Sainsbury's, remained steadfastly neutral, concerned that taking sides in the divisive issue could lead to a backlash from customers.[142] Richard Branson stated that he was "very fearful" of the consequences of a UK exit from the EU.[143] Alan Sugar expressed similar concern.[144] James Dyson, founder of the Dyson company, argued in June 2016 that the introduction of tariffs would be less damaging for British exporters than the appreciation of the pound against the Euro, arguing that, because Britain ran a 100 billion pound trade deficit with the EU, tariffs could represent a significant revenue source for the Treasury.[145] Pointing out that languages, plugs and laws differ between EU member states, Dyson said that the 28-country bloc was not a single market, and argued the fastest growing markets were outside the EU.[145] Engineering company Rolls-Royce wrote to employees to say that it did not want the UK to leave the EU.[146] Surveys of large UK businesses showed a strong majority favoured the UK remaining in the EU.[147] Small and medium-sized UK businesses were more evenly split.[147] Polls of foreign businesses found that around half would be less likely to do business in the UK, while 1% would increase their investment in the UK.[148][149][150] Two large car manufacturers, Ford and BMW, warned in 2013 against Brexit, suggesting it would be "devastating" for the economy.[151] Conversely, in 2015, some other manufacturing executives told Reuters that they would not shut their plants if the UK left the EU, although future investment might be put at risk.[152] The CEO of Vauxhall stated that a Brexit would not materially affect its business.[153] Foreign-based Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda confirmed that, whether or not Britain left the EU, Toyota would carry on manufacturing cars in Britain as they had done before.[154] Exchange rates and stock markets In the week following conclusion of the UK's renegotiation (and especially after Boris Johnson announced that he would support the UK leaving), the pound fell to a seven-year low against the dollar and economists at HSBC warned that it could drop even more.[155] At the same time, Daragh Maher, head of HSBC, suggested that if Sterling dropped in value so would the Euro. European banking analysts also cited Brexit concerns as the reason for the Euro's decline.[156] Immediately after a poll in June 2016 showed that the Leave campaign was 10 points ahead, the pound dropped by a further one per cent.[157] In the same month, it was announced that the value of goods exported from the UK in April had shown a month-on-month increase of 11.2%, "the biggest rise since records started in 1998".[158][159] Uncertainty over the referendum result, together with several other factors—US interest rates rising, low commodity prices, low Eurozone growth and concerns over emerging markets such as China—contributed to a high level of stock market volatility in January and February 2016.[citation needed] On 14 June, polls showing that a Brexit was more likely led to the FTSE 100 falling by 2%, losing £98 billion in value.[160][161] After further polls suggested a move back towards Remain, the pound and the FTSE recovered.[162] On the day of the referendum, sterling hit a 2016 high of $1.5018 for £1 and the FTSE 100 also climbed to a 2016 high, as a new poll suggested a win for the Remain campaign.[163] Initial results suggested a vote for 'Remain' and the value of the pound held its value. However, when the result for Sunderland was announced, it indicated an unexpected swing to 'Leave'. Subsequent results appeared to confirm this swing and sterling fell in value to $1.3777, its lowest level since 1985. On the following Monday when the markets opened, £1 sterling fell to a new low of $1.32.[164] Muhammad Ali Nasir and Jamie Morgan two British economists differentiated and reflected on the weakness of the Sterling due to the weak external position of the UK's economy and the further role played by the uncertainty surrounding Brexit[165] They reported that during the week of the referendum, up to the declaration of the result, exchange rate depreciation deviated from the long-run trend by approximately 3.5 per cent, but the actual immediate effect on the exchange rate was an 8 per cent depreciation. Furthermore, that over the period from the announcement of the referendum, the exchange rate fluctuated markedly around its trend and one can also identify a larger effect based on the "wrong-footing" of markets at the point when the outcome was announced.[165] When the London Stock Exchange opened on the morning of 24 June, the FTSE 100 fell from 6338.10 to 5806.13 in the first ten minutes of trading. It recovered to 6091.27 after a further 90 minutes, before further recovering to 6162.97 by the end of the day's trading. When the markets reopened the following Monday, the FTSE 100 showed a steady decline losing over 2% by mid-afternoon.[166] Upon opening later on the Friday after the referendum, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 450 points or about 2½% in less than half an hour. The Associated Press called the sudden worldwide stock market decline a stock market crash.[167] Investors in worldwide stock markets lost more than the equivalent of US$2 trillion on 24 June 2016, making it the worst single-day loss in history, in absolute terms.[168] The market losses amounted to US$3 trillion by 27 June.[169] Sterling fell to a 31-year low against the US dollar.[170] The UK's and the EU's sovereign debt credit ratings were also lowered to AA by Standard & Poor's.[171][172] By mid-afternoon on 27 June 2016, sterling was at a 31-year low, having fallen 11% in two trading days, and the FTSE 100 had surrendered £85 billion;[173] however, by 29 June it had recovered all its losses since the markets closed on polling day and the value of the pound had begun to rise.[174][175] European responses The referendum was generally well-accepted by the European far right.[176] Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French Front national, described the possibility of a Brexit as "like the fall of the Berlin Wall" and commented that "Brexit would be marvellous – extraordinary – for all European peoples who long for freedom".[177] A poll in France in April 2016 showed that 59% of the French people were in favour of Britain remaining in the EU.[178] Dutch politician Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, said that the Netherlands should follow Britain's example: "Like in the 1940s, once again Britain could help liberate Europe from another totalitarian monster, this time called 'Brussels'. Again, we could be saved by the British."[179] Polish President Andrzej Duda lent his support for the UK remaining within the EU.[180] Moldovan Prime Minister Pavel Filip asked all citizens of Moldova living in the UK to speak to their British friends and convince them to vote for the UK to remain in the EU.[181] Spanish foreign minister José García-Margallo said Spain would demand control of Gibraltar the "very next day" after a British withdrawal from the EU.[182] Margallo also threatened to close the border with Gibraltar if Britain left the EU.[183] Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström said on 11 June 2016 that if Britain left the EU, other countries would have referendums on whether to leave the EU, and that if Britain stayed in the EU, other countries would negotiate, ask and demand to have special treatment.[184] Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka suggested in February 2016 that the Czech Republic would start discussions on leaving the EU if the UK voted for an EU exit.[185] Non-European responses International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned in February 2016 that the uncertainty over the outcome of the referendum would be bad "in and of itself" for the British economy.[186] In response, Leave campaigner Priti Patel said a previous warning from the IMF regarding the coalition government's deficit plan for the UK was proven incorrect and that the IMF "were wrong then and are wrong now".[187] United States In October 2015, United States Trade Representative Michael Froman declared that the United States was not keen on pursuing a separate free-trade agreement (FTA) with Britain if it were to leave the EU, thus, according to The Guardian newspaper, undermining a key economic argument of proponents of those who say Britain would prosper on its own and be able to secure bilateral FTAs with trading partners.[188] Also in October 2015, the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom Matthew Barzun said that UK participation in NATO and the EU made each group "better and stronger" and that, while the decision to remain or leave is a choice for the British people, it was in the US interest that it remain.[189] In April 2016, eight former US Secretaries of the Treasury, who had served both Democratic and Republican presidents, urged Britain to remain in the EU.[190] In July 2015, President Barack Obama confirmed the long-standing US preference for the UK to remain in the EU. Obama said: "Having the UK in the EU gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union, and is part of the cornerstone of the institutions built following World War II that has made the world safer and more prosperous. We want to make sure that the United Kingdom continues to have that influence."[191] Some Conservative MPs accused U.S. President Barack Obama of interfering in the Brexit vote,[192][193] with Boris Johnson calling the intervention a "piece of outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy"[194] and UKIP leader Nigel Farage accusing him of "monstrous interference", saying "You wouldn't expect the British Prime Minister to intervene in your presidential election, you wouldn't expect the Prime Minister to endorse one candidate or another."[195] Obama's intervention was criticised by Republican Senator Ted Cruz as "a slap in the face of British self-determination as the president, typically, elevated an international organisation over the rights of a sovereign people", and stated that "Britain will be at the front of the line for a free trade deal with America", were Brexit to occur.[196][197] More than 100 MPs from the Conservatives, Labour, UKIP and the DUP wrote a letter to the U.S. ambassador in London asking President Obama not to intervene in the Brexit vote as it had "long been the established practice not to interfere in the domestic political affairs of our allies and we hope that this will continue to be the case."[198][199] Two years later, one of Obama's former aides recounted that the public intervention was made following a request by Cameron.[200] Prior to the vote, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump anticipated that Britain would leave based on its concerns over migration,[201] while Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton hoped that Britain would remain in the EU to strengthen transatlantic co-operation.[202] Other states In October 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared his support for Britain remaining in the EU, saying "China hopes to see a prosperous Europe and a united EU, and hopes Britain, as an important member of the EU, can play an even more positive and constructive role in promoting the deepening development of China-EU ties". Chinese diplomats have stated "off the record" that the People's Republic sees the EU as a counterbalance to American economic power, and that an EU without Britain would mean a stronger United States.[citation needed] In February 2016, the finance ministers from the G20 major economies warned for the UK to leave the EU would lead to "a shock" in the global economy.[203][204] In May 2016, the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that Australia would prefer the UK to remain in the EU, but that it was a matter for the British people, and "whatever judgment they make, the relations between Britain and Australia will be very, very close".[205] Indonesian president Joko Widodo stated during a European trip that he was not in favour of Brexit.[206] Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe issued a statement of reasons why he was "very concerned" at the possibility of Brexit.[207] Russian President Vladimir Putin said: "I want to say it is none of our business, it is the business of the people of the UK."[208] Maria Zakharova, the official Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said: "Russia has nothing to do with Brexit. We are not involved in this process in any way. We don't have any interest in it."[209] Economists In November 2015, the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney said that the Bank of England would do what was necessary to help the UK economy if the British people voted to leave the EU.[210] In March 2016, Carney told MPs that an EU exit was the "biggest domestic risk" to the UK economy, but that remaining a member also carried risks, related to the European Monetary Union, of which the UK is not a member.[211] In May 2016, Carney said that a "technical recession" was one of the possible risks of the UK leaving the EU.[212] However, Iain Duncan Smith said Carney's comment should be taken with "a pinch of salt", saying "all forecasts in the end are wrong".[213] In December 2015, the Bank of England published a report about the impact of immigration on wages. The report concluded that immigration put downward pressure on workers' wages, particularly low-skilled workers: a 10 per cent point rise in the proportion of migrants working in low-skilled services drove down the average wages of low-skilled workers by about 2 per cent.[214] The 10 percentage point rise cited in the paper is larger than the entire rise observed since the 2004–06 period in the semi/unskilled services sector, which is about 7 percentage points.[215] In March 2016, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argued that he might reconsider his support for the UK remaining in the EU if the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) were to be agreed to.[216] Stiglitz warned that under the investor-state dispute settlement provision in current drafts of the TTIP, governments risked being sued for loss of profits resulting from new regulations, including health and safety regulations to limit the use of asbestos or tobacco.[216] The German economist Clemens Fuest wrote that there was a liberal, free-trade bloc in the EU comprising the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, controlling 32% of the votes in the European Council and standing in opposition to the dirigiste, protectionist policies favoured by France and its allies.[217] Germany with its 'social market' economy stands midway between the French dirigiste economic model and the British free-market economic model. From the German viewpoint, the existence of the liberal bloc allows Germany to play-off free-market Britain against dirigiste France, and that if Britain were to leave, the liberal bloc would be severely weakened, thereby allowing the French to take the EU into a much more dirigiste direction that would be unattractive from the standpoint of Berlin.[217] A study by Oxford Economics for the Law Society of England and Wales has suggested that Brexit would have a particularly large negative impact on the UK financial services industry and the law firms that support it, which could cost the law sector as much as £1.7bn per annum by 2030.[218] The Law Society's own report into the possible effects of Brexit notes that leaving the EU would be likely to reduce the role played by the UK as a centre for resolving disputes between foreign firms, whereas a potential loss of "passporting" rights would require financial services firms to transfer departments responsible for regulatory oversight overseas.[219] World Pensions Forum director M. Nicolas J. Firzli has argued that the Brexit debate should be viewed within the broader context of economic analysis of EU law and regulation in relation to English common law, arguing: "Every year, the British Parliament is forced to pass tens of new statutes reflecting the latest EU directives coming from Brussels – a highly undemocratic process known as 'transposition'... Slowly but surely, these new laws dictated by EU commissars are conquering English common law, imposing upon UK businesses and citizens an ever-growing collection of fastidious regulations in every field".[220] Thiemo Fetzer, professor of economics from University of Warwick, analyzed the welfare reforms in the UK since 2000 and suggests that numerous austerity-induced welfare reforms from 2010 onwards have stopped contributing to mitigate income differences through transfer payments. This could be a key activating factor of anti-EU preferences that lie behind the development of economic grievances and the lack of support in a Remain victory.[221] Michael Jacobs, the current director of the Commission on Economic Justice at the Institute for Public Policy Research and Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in University College London in Economics of Innovation and Public Value have found that the Brexit campaign had the tendency to blame external forces for domestic economic problems and have argued that the problems within the economy wasn't due to 'unstoppable forces of globalisation' but rather the result of active political and business decisions. Instead, they claim that orthodox economic theory has guided poor economic policy such as investment and that has been the cause of problems within the British economy.[222] Institute for Fiscal Studies In May 2016, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that an EU exit could mean two more years of austerity cuts as the government would have to make up for an estimated loss of £20 billion to £40 billion of tax revenue. The head of the IFS, Paul Johnson, said that the UK "could perfectly reasonably decide that we are willing to pay a bit of a price for leaving the EU and regaining some sovereignty and control over immigration and so on. That there would be some price though, I think is now almost beyond doubt."[223] Lawyers A poll of lawyers conducted by a legal recruiter in late May 2016 suggested 57% of lawyers wanted to remain in the EU.[224] During a Treasury Committee shortly following the vote, economic experts generally agreed that the leave vote would be detrimental to the UK economy.[225] Michael Dougan, Professor of European Law and Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law at the University of Liverpool and a constitutional lawyer, described the Leave campaign as "one of the most dishonest political campaigns this country [the UK] has ever seen", for using arguments based on constitutional law that he said were readily demonstrable as false.[226] NHS officials Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, warned in May 2016 that a recession following a Brexit would be "very dangerous" for the National Health Service, saying that "when the British economy sneezes, the NHS catches a cold."[227] Three-quarters of a sample of NHS leaders agreed that leaving the EU would have a negative effect on the NHS as a whole. In particular, eight out of 10 respondents felt that leaving the EU would have a negative impact on trusts' ability to recruit health and social care staff.[228] In April 2016, a group of nearly 200 health professionals and researchers warned that the NHS would be in jeopardy if Britain left the European Union.[229] The leave campaign reacted by saying more money would be available to be spent on the NHS if the UK left the EU. British health charities Guidelines by the Charity Commission for England and Wales that forbid political activity for registered charities have limited UK health organizations' commentary on EU poll, according to anonymous sources consulted by the Lancet.[230] According to Simon Wessely, head of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London – neither a special revision of the guidelines from 7 March 2016, nor Cameron's encouragement have made health organisations, willing to speak out.[230] The Genetic Alliance UK the Royal College of Midwives the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the Chief Executive of the National Health Service had all stated pro-remain positions by early June 2016.[230] Fishing industry A June 2016 survey of British fishermen found that 92% intended to vote to leave the EU.[231] The EU's Common Fisheries Policy was mentioned as a central reason for their near-unanimity.[231] More than three-quarters believed that they would be able to land more fish, and 93% stated that leaving the EU would benefit the fishing industry.[232] Historians In May 2016, more than 300 historians wrote in a joint letter to The Guardian that Britain could play a bigger role in the world as part of the EU. They said: "As historians of Britain and of Europe, we believe that Britain has had in the past, and will have in the future, an irreplaceable role to play in Europe."[233] On the other hand, many historians argued in favour of leaving, seeing it as a return to self-sovereignty.[234][235] Exit plan competition Following David Cameron's announcement of an EU referendum, in July 2013 the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) announced the "Brexit Prize", a competition to find the best plan for a UK exit from the European Union, and declared that a departure was a "real possibility" following the 2015 general election.[236] Iain Mansfield, a Cambridge graduate and UKTI diplomat, submitted the winning thesis: A Blueprint for Britain: Openness not Isolation.[237] Mansfield's submission focused on addressing both trade and regulatory issues with EU member states as well as other global trading partners.[238][239] Opinion polling Main article: Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Opinion polling on the referendum Opinion polls from 2010 onwards suggested the British public were relatively evenly divided on the question, with opposition to EU membership peaking in November 2012 at 56% compared with 30% who prefer to remain in,[240] while in June 2015 those in favour of Britain remaining in the EU reached 43% versus those opposed 36%.[241] The largest ever poll (of 20,000 people, in March 2014) showed the public evenly split on the issue, with 41% in favour of withdrawal, 41% in favour of membership, and 18% undecided.[242] However, when asked how they would vote if Britain renegotiated the terms of its membership of the EU, and the UK Government stated that British interests had been satisfactorily protected, more than 50% indicated that they would vote for Britain to stay in.[243] Analysis of polling suggested that young voters tended to support remaining in the EU, whereas those older tend to support leaving, but there was no gender split in attitudes.[244][245] In February 2016 YouGov also found that euroscepticism correlated with people of lower income and that "higher social grades are more clearly in favour of remaining in the EU", but noted that euroscepticism also had strongholds in "the more wealthy, Tory shires".[246] Scotland, Wales and many English urban areas with large student populations were more pro-EU.[246] Big business was broadly behind remaining in the EU, though the situation among smaller companies was less clear-cut.[247] In polls of economists, lawyers, and scientists, clear majorities saw the UK's membership of the EU as beneficial.[248][249][250][251][252] On the day of the referendum, the bookmaker Ladbrokes offered odds of 6/1 against the UK leaving the EU.[253] Meanwhile, spread betting firm Spreadex offered a Leave Vote Share spread of 45–46, a Remain Vote Share spread of 53.5-54.5, and a Remain Binary Index spread of 80–84.7, where victory for Remain would makeup to 100 and a defeat 0.[254] On the day YouGov poll Remain Leave Undecided Lead Sample Conducted by 52% 48% N/A 4% 4,772 YouGov Shortly after the polls closed at 10 pm on 23 June, the British polling company YouGov released a poll conducted among almost 5,000 people on the day; it suggested a narrow lead for "Remain", which polled 52% with Leave polling 48%. It was later criticised for overestimating the margin of the "Remain" vote,[255] when it became clear a few hours later that the UK had voted 51.9% to 48.1% in favour of leaving the European Union. Issues Main article: Issues in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum The number of jobs lost or gained by a withdrawal was a dominant issue; the BBC's outline of issues warned that a precise figure was difficult to find. The Leave campaign argued that a reduction in red tape associated with EU regulations would create more jobs and that small to medium-sized companies who trade domestically would be the biggest beneficiaries. Those arguing to remain in the EU, claimed that millions of jobs would be lost. The EU's importance as a trading partner and the outcome of its trade status if it left was a disputed issue. Whereas those wanting to stay cited that most of the UK's trade was made with the EU, those arguing to leave say that its trade was not as important as it used to be. Scenarios of the economic outlook for the country if it left the EU were generally negative. The United Kingdom also paid more into the EU budget than it received.[256] Boris Johnson played a key role in the Vote Leave campaign. Citizens of EU countries, including the United Kingdom, have the right to travel, live and work within other EU countries, as free movement is one of the four founding principles of the EU.[257] Campaigners for remaining said that EU immigration had positive impacts on the UK's economy, citing that the country's growth forecasts were partly based upon continued high levels of net immigration.[256] The Office for Budget Responsibility also claimed that taxes from immigrants boost public funding.[256] A recent[when?] academic paper suggests that migration from Eastern Europe put pressure on wage growth at the lower end of the wage distribution, while at the same time increasing pressures on public services and housing.[258] The Leave campaign believed reduced immigration would ease pressure in public services such as schools and hospitals, as well as giving British workers more jobs and higher wages.[256] According to official Office for National Statistics data, net migration in 2015 was 333,000, which was the second highest level on record, far above David Cameron's target of tens of thousands.[259][260] Net migration from the EU was 184,000.[260] The figures also showed that 77,000 EU migrants who came to Britain were looking for work.[259][260] After the announcement had been made as to the outcome of the referendum, Rowena Mason, political correspondent for The Guardian offered the following assessment: "Polling suggests discontent with the scale of migration to the UK has been the biggest factor pushing Britons to vote out, with the contest turning into a referendum on whether people are happy to accept free movement in return for free trade."[261] A columnist for The Times, Philip Collins, went a step further in his analysis: "This was a referendum about immigration disguised as a referendum about the European Union."[262] The Conservative MEP (Member of the European Parliament) representing South East England, Daniel Hannan, predicted on the BBC programme Newsnight that the level of immigration would remain high after Brexit.[263] "Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the EU, they are going to be disappointed. ... you will look in vain for anything that the Leave campaign said at any point that ever suggested there would ever be any kind of border closure or drawing up of the drawbridge."[264] The EU had offered David Cameron a so-called "emergency brake" which would have allowed the UK to withhold social benefits to new immigrants for the first four years after they arrived; this brake could have been applied for a period of seven years."[265] That offer was still on the table at the time of the Brexit referendum, but expired when the vote determined that the UK would leave the EU.[266] The possibility that the UK's smaller constituent countries could vote to remain within the EU but find themselves withdrawn from the EU led to discussion about the risk to the unity of the United Kingdom.[267] Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, made it clear that she believed that a second independence referendum would "almost certainly" be demanded by Scots if the UK voted to leave the EU but Scotland did not.[268] The First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, said: "If Wales votes to remain in [the EU] but the UK votes to leave, there will be a... constitutional crisis. The UK cannot possibly continue in its present form if England votes to leave and everyone else votes to stay".[269] There was concern that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed trade agreement between the United States and the EU, would be a threat to the public services of EU member states.[270][271][272][273] Jeremy Corbyn, on the Remain side, said that he pledged to veto TTIP in Government.[274] John Mills, on the Leave side, said that the UK could not veto TTIP because trade pacts were decided by Qualified Majority Voting in the European Council.[275] There was debate over the extent to which the European Union membership aided security and defence in comparison to the UK's membership of NATO and the United Nations.[276] Security concerns over the union's free movement policy were raised too, because people with EU passports were unlikely to receive detailed checks at border control.[277] Debates, question and answer sessions, and interviews A debate was held by The Guardian on 15 March 2016, featuring the leader of UKIP Nigel Farage, Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, the leader of Labour's "yes" campaign Alan Johnson and former leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg.[278] Earlier in the campaign, on 11 January, a debate took place between Nigel Farage and Carwyn Jones, who was at the time the First Minister of Wales and leader of the Welsh Labour Party.[279][280] Reluctance to have Conservative Party members argue against one another has seen some debates split, with Leave and Remain candidates interviewed separately.[281] The Spectator held a debate hosted by Andrew Neil on 26 April, which featured Nick Clegg, Liz Kendall and Chuka Umunna arguing for a remain vote, and Nigel Farage, Daniel Hannan and Labour MP Kate Hoey arguing for a leave vote.[282] The Daily Express held a debate on 3 June, featuring Nigel Farage, Kate Hoey and Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg debating Labour MPs Siobhain McDonagh and Chuka Umunna and businessman Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent drinks.[283] Andrew Neil presented four interviews ahead of the referendum. The interviewees were Hilary Benn, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Iain Duncan Smith on 6, 8, 10 and 17 May, respectively.[284] The scheduled debates and question sessions included a number of question and answer sessions with various campaigners.[285][286] and a debate on ITV held on 9 June that included Angela Eagle, Amber Rudd and Nicola Sturgeon, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, and Gisela Stuart.[287] EU Referendum: The Great Debate was held at Wembley Arena on 21 June and hosted by David Dimbleby, Mishal Husain and Emily Maitlis in front of an audience of 6,000.[288] The audience was split evenly between both sides. Sadiq Khan, Ruth Davidson and Frances O'Grady appeared for Remain. Leave was represented by the same trio as the ITV debate on 9 June (Johnson, Leadsom and Stuart).[289] Europe: The Final Debate with Jeremy Paxman was held the following day on Channel 4.[290] Voting, voting areas, and counts Sign outside a polling station in London on the morning of the referendum Voting took place from 0700 BST (WEST) until 2200 BST (same hours CEST in Gibraltar) in 41,000 polling stations across 382 voting areas, with each polling station limited to a maximum of 2,500 voters.[291] The referendum was held across all four countries of the United Kingdom, as well as in Gibraltar, as a single majority vote. The 382 voting areas were grouped into twelve regional counts and there was separate declarations for each of the regional counts. In England, as happened in the 2011 AV referendum, the 326 districts were used as the local voting areas and the returns of these then fed into nine English regional counts. In Scotland the local voting areas were the 32 local councils which then fed their results into the Scottish national count, and in Wales the 22 local councils were their local voting areas before the results were then fed into the Welsh national count. Northern Ireland, as was the case in the AV referendum, was a single voting and national count area although local totals by Westminster parliamentary constituency areas were announced. Gibraltar was a single voting area, but as Gibraltar was to be treated and included as if it were a part of South West England, its results was included together with the South West England regional count.[291] The following table shows the breakdown of the voting areas and regional counts that were used for the referendum.[291] Country Counts and voting areas United Kingdom (together with Gibraltar, treated as if it were a [full] part of the United Kingdom) Referendum declaration; 12 regional counts; 382 voting areas (381 in the UK, 1 in Gibraltar) Constituent countries Counts and voting areas England (together with Gibraltar, treated as if it were a part of South West England) 9 regional counts; 327 voting areas (326 in the UK, 1 in Gibraltar) Northern Ireland National count and single voting area; 18 parliamentary constituency totals Scotland National count; 32 voting areas Wales National count; 22 voting areas Disturbances On 16 June 2016, a pro-EU Labour MP, Jo Cox, was shot and killed in Birstall, West Yorkshire the week before the referendum by a man calling out "death to traitors, freedom for Britain", and a man who intervened was injured.[292] The two rival official campaigns agreed to suspend their activities as a mark of respect to Cox.[81] After the referendum, evidence emerged that Leave.EU had continued to put out advertising the day after Jo Cox's murder.[293][294] David Cameron cancelled a planned rally in Gibraltar supporting British EU membership.[295] Campaigning resumed on 19 June.[296][297] Polling officials in the Yorkshire and Humber region also halted counting of the referendum ballots on the evening of 23 June to observe a minute of silence.[298] The Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, UK Independence Party and the Green Party all announced that they would not contest the ensuing by-election in Cox's constituency as a mark of respect.[299] On polling day itself two polling stations in Kingston upon Thames were flooded by rain and had to be relocated.[300] In advance of polling day, concern had been expressed that the courtesy pencils provided in polling booths could allow votes to be later altered. Although this was widely dismissed as a conspiracy theory (see: Voting pencil conspiracy theory), some Leave campaigners advocated that voters should instead use pens to mark their ballot papers. On polling day in Winchester an emergency call was made to police about "threatening behaviour" outside the polling station. After questioning a woman who had been offering to lend her pen to voters, the police decided that no offence was being committed.[301] Result Main article: Results of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Of the 382 voting areas in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar a total of 270 returned majority votes in favour of "Leave" whereas 129 returned majority votes in favour of "Remain" in the referendum including all 32 areas in Scotland.   Leave   Remain The final result was announced on Friday 24 June 2016 at 07:20 BST by then-Electoral Commission Chairwoman Jenny Watson at Manchester Town Hall after all 382 voting areas and the twelve UK regions had declared their totals. With a national turnout of 72% across the United Kingdom and Gibraltar (representing 33,577,342 people), at least 16,788,672 votes were required to win a majority. The electorate voted to "Leave the European Union", with a majority of 1,269,501 votes (3.8%) over those who voted "Remain a member of the European Union".[302] The national turnout of 72% was the highest ever for a UK-wide referendum, and the highest for any national vote since the 1992 general election.[303][304][305][306] Roughly 38% of the UK population voted to leave the EU and roughly 35% voted to remain.[307] 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Choice Votes % Leave the European Union 17,410,742 51.89 Remain a member of the European Union 16,141,241 48.11 Valid votes 33,551,983 99.92 Invalid or blank votes 25,359 0.08 Total votes 33,577,342 100.00 Registered voters/turnout 46,500,001 72.21 Source: Electoral Commission[308] National referendum results (excluding invalid votes) Leave 17,410,742 (51.9%) Remain 16,141,241 (48.1%) 50% Regional count results Region Electorate Voter turnout, of eligible Votes Proportion of votes Invalid votes Remain Leave Remain Leave   East Midlands 3,384,299 74.2% 1,033,036 1,475,479 41.18% 58.82% 1,981   East of England 4,398,796 75.7% 1,448,616 1,880,367 43.52% 56.48% 2,329   Greater London 5,424,768 69.7% 2,263,519 1,513,232 59.93% 40.07% 4,453   North East England 1,934,341 69.3% 562,595 778,103 41.96% 58.04% 689   North West England 5,241,568 70.0% 1,699,020 1,966,925 46.35% 53.65% 2,682   Northern Ireland 1,260,955 62.7% 440,707 349,442 55.78% 44.22% 374   Scotland 3,987,112 67.2% 1,661,191 1,018,322 62.00% 38.00% 1,666   South East England 6,465,404 76.8% 2,391,718 2,567,965 48.22% 51.78% 3,427   South West England (inc Gibraltar) 4,138,134 76.7% 1,503,019 1,669,711 47.37% 52.63% 2,179   Wales 2,270,272 71.7% 772,347 854,572 47.47% 52.53% 1,135   West Midlands 4,116,572 72.0% 1,207,175 1,755,687 40.74% 59.26% 2,507   Yorkshire and the Humber 3,877,780 70.7% 1,158,298 1,580,937 42.29% 57.71% 1,937 Results by constituent countries & Gibraltar Country Electorate Voter turnout, of eligible Votes Proportion of votes Invalid votes Remain Leave Remain Leave   England 38,981,662 73.0% 13,247,674 15,187,583 46.59% 53.41% 22,157   Gibraltar 24,119 83.7% 19,322 823 95.91% 4.08% 27   Northern Ireland 1,260,955 62.7% 440,707 349,442 55.78% 44.22% 384   Scotland 3,987,112 67.2% 1,661,191 1,018,322 62.00% 38.00% 1,666   Wales 2,270,272 71.7% 772,347 854,572 47.47% 52.53% 1,135 Voter demographics and trends Further information: Causes of the vote in favour of Brexit Voting figures from local referendum counts and ward-level data (using local demographic information collected in the 2011 census) suggests that Leave votes were strongly correlated with lower qualifications and higher age.[309][310][311][312] The data were obtained from about one in nine wards in England and Wales, with very little information from Scotland and none from Northern Ireland.[309] A YouGov survey reported similar findings; these are summarised in the charts below.[313][314] Researchers based at the University of Warwick found that areas with "deprivation in terms of education, income and employment were more likely to vote Leave". The Leave vote tended to be greater in areas which had lower incomes and high unemployment, a strong tradition of manufacturing employment, and in which the population had fewer qualifications.[315] It also tended to be greater where there was a large flow of Eastern European migrants (mainly low-skilled workers) into areas with a large share of native low-skilled workers.[315] Those in lower social grades (especially the 'working class') were more likely to vote Leave, while those in higher social grades (especially the 'upper middle class') were more likely to vote Remain.[316] Polls by Ipsos MORI, YouGov and Lord Ashcroft all assert that 70–75% of under 25s voted 'remain'.[317] Additionally according to YouGov, only 54% of 25- to 49-year-olds voted 'remain', whilst 60% of 50- to 64-year-olds and 64% of over-65s voted 'leave', meaning that the support for 'remain' was not as strong outside the youngest demographic.[318] Also, YouGov found that around 87% of under-25s in 2018 would now vote to stay in the EU.[319] Opinion polling by Lord Ashcroft Polls found that Leave voters believed leaving the EU was "more likely to bring about a better immigration system, improved border controls, a fairer welfare system, better quality of life, and the ability to control our own laws", while Remain voters believed EU membership "would be better for the economy, international investment, and the UK's influence in the world".[320] Immigration is thought to be a particular worry for older people that voted Leave, who consider it a potential threat to national identity and culture.[321] The polling found that the main reasons people had voted Leave were "the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK", and that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders". The main reason people voted Remain was that "the risks of voting to leave the EU looked too great when it came to things like the economy, jobs and prices".[320] One analysis suggests that in contrast to the general correlation between age and likelihood of having voted to leave the EU, those who experienced the majority of their formative period (between the ages of 15 and 25) during the Second World War are more likely to oppose Brexit than the rest of the over-65 age group,[failed verification] for they are more likely to associate the EU with bringing peace.[322]     EU referendum vote by age and education, based on a YouGov survey.[313][314]     EU referendum vote by age and education, based on a YouGov survey.[313][314]     EU referendum leave vote versus educational attainment (Highest level of qualification for Level 4 qualifications and above) by area for England and Wales.[309][failed verification]     EU referendum leave vote versus educational attainment (Highest level of qualification for Level 4 qualifications and above) by area for England and Wales.[309][failed verification] Ipsos MORI demographic polling breakdown On 5 September 2016, the polling company Ipsos MORI estimated the following percentage breakdown of votes in the referendum by different demographic group, as well as the percentage of turnout among registered voters in most of those demographic groups:[323] Overall 2015 general election vote Labour Lib Dem Conservative UKIP Did not vote (but not too young) Remain 48% 64% 69% 41% 1% 42% Leave 52% 36% 31% 59% 99% 58% Turnout 72% 77% 81% 85% 89% 45% Age group 18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65–74 75+ Remain 75% 60% 55% 44% 39% 34% 37% Leave 25% 40% 45% 56% 61% 66% 63% Turnout 60% 66% 71% 73% 79% 82% 73% Gender Men by age group Women by age group Men Women 18–34 35–54 55+ 18–34 35–54 55+ Remain 45% 51% 64% 44% 35% 67% 55% 39% Leave 55% 49% 36% 56% 65% 33% 45% 61% Turnout 74% 71% 64% 74% 80% 64% 70% 76% Social grade Men by social grade Women by social grade AB C1 C2 DE AB C1 C2 DE AB C1 C2 DE Remain 59% 52% 38% 36% 54% 51% 35% 36% 65% 54% 41% 37% Leave 41% 48% 62% 64% 46% 49% 65% 64% 35% 46% 59% 63% Turnout 79% 75% 70% 65% 81% 75% 70% 67% 76% 74% 70% 63% 18–34 year olds by social grade 35–54 year olds by social grade 55+ year olds by social grade AB C1 C2 DE AB C1 C2 DE AB C1 C2 DE Remain 71% 71% 54% 56% 61% 53% 35% 36% 48% 37% 32% 30% Leave 29% 29% 46% 44% 39% 47% 65% 64% 52% 63% 68% 70% Turnout 71% 67% 58% 54% Educational level Degree or higher Qualifications below degree No qualifications Remain 68% 44% 30% Leave 32% 56% 70% Turnout 78% 71% 71% Work sector Housing tenure Public sector Private sector Fully owned Mortgage Social renter Private renter Remain 56% 52% 42% 54% 37% 56% Leave 44% 48% 58% 46% 63% 44% Turnout 79% 75% 61% 65% Ethnic group White All non-white Black South Asian Chinese Mixed race Other Remain 46% 69% 73% 67% 70% 67% 65% Leave 54% 31% 27% 33% 30% 33% 35% Turnout 74% 57% Work status Full-time Part-time Student Unemployed (and claiming UC or JSA) Not working (looking after home) Retired Other Remain 53% 53% 80% 40% 36% 36% 39% Leave 47% 47% 20% 60% 64% 64% 61% Region Remain Leave Turnout All (GB) 48% 52% 66% East 44% 56% 70% East Midlands 41% 59% 68% London 60% 40% 56% North East 42% 58% 64% North West 46% 54% 65% Scotland 62% 38% 62% South East 48% 52% 71% South West 47% 53% 72% Wales 47% 53% 66% West Midlands 41% 59% 66% Yorkshire & Humberside 42% 58% 65% Reactions to the result Further information: International reactions to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Pro-Brexit campaigners outside Parliament in London in November 2016 Immediate reaction to the vote Main article: Aftermath of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Youth protests and non-inclusion of underage citizens The referendum was criticised for not granting people younger than 18 years of age a vote. Unlike in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the vote was not extended to 16- and 17-year-old citizens. Critics argued that these people would live with the consequences of the referendum for longer than those who were able to vote. Some supporters for the inclusion of these young citizens considered this exclusion a violation of democratic principles and a major shortcoming of the referendum.[324][325] Increase of applications for passports of other EU countries The foreign ministry of Ireland stated on 24 June 2016 that the number of applications from the UK for Irish passports had increased significantly.[326][327] Enquiries about passports also increased: the Irish Embassy in London reported 4,000 a day immediately after the vote to leave, in comparison with the normal 200 a day.[328] Other EU nations also had increases in requests for passports from British citizens, including France and Belgium.[328] Abuse and hate crime allegations There were more than a hundred reports of racist abuse and hate crime in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, with many citing the plan to leave the European Union.[329] It was claimed that there had been a 57% increase in hate crime following the referendum vote. However, the National Police Chiefs' Council Lead for Hate Crime, Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, said: "This should not be read as a national increase in hate crime of 57% but an increase in reporting through one mechanism".[330] Others[who?] claimed that the numbers did not necessarily reflect "any objective spread in modern Britain", but that the apparent spike in hate crime was the result of the subjective definition of the crime and that the police being incentivised "to find hatred". In the UK, crimes are recorded as hate crimes based on the perception of the victim. Assistant Chief Constable Maurice Mason of the Essex police explained that "If the person feels it's a hate crime it'll get recorded as a hate crime", saying that his county's "50% increase in reported hate crimes" post referendum were "low level matters, some members of the public complaining about Nigel Farage or whatever ... that’ll get recorded as a hate crime".[331] On 24 June 2016, a Polish school in Cambridgeshire was vandalised with a sign reading "Leave the EU. No more Polish vermin".[332] Following the referendum result, similar signs were distributed outside homes and schools in Huntingdon, with some left on the cars of Polish residents collecting their children from school.[333] On 26 June, the London office of the Polish Social and Cultural Association was vandalised with graffiti that was initially characterised as a racist hate crime. However it later emerged that the graffiti, which said, 'F*** you OMP’ may have been directed at OMP, a eurosceptic Polish think tank that had issued a statement congratulating Britain on its Brexit vote.[334][335] This incident was also unsuccessfully investigated by the police.[332][335] In Wales, a Muslim woman was told to leave after the referendum, even though she had been born and raised in the United Kingdom.[336] Other reports of racism occurred as perceived foreigners were targeted in supermarkets, on buses and on street corners, and told to leave the country immediately.[337] All such incidents were widely condemned by politicians and religious leaders.[338] By September 2016, it was reported, according to the LGBT anti-violence charity Galop, that attacks on LGBT people in the United Kingdom had risen by 147% in the three months after the referendum.[339] However some gay commentators dismissed the claim of a link between Brexit and an increase in attacks on members of the LGBTQ community.[340] The killing of a Polish national Arkadiusz Jozwik in Harlow, Essex in August 2016[341] was widely, but falsely,[342] speculated to be linked to the Leave result.[343] A BBC Newsnight report by John Sweeney showed an interview with someone who knew the victim who then claimed that Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage had "blood on his hands".[344] It was mentioned in the European Parliament by the EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker who said: "We Europeans can never accept Polish workers being harassed, beaten up or even murdered on the streets of Harlow."[343] A teenager was subsequently convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three and a half years in a young offender institution but the trial did not conclude that the altercation resulting in Jozwik's death was a hate crime.[342] Nigel Farage criticised the "sensationalist" reporting of the issue and complained to the BBC about broadcasting the "blood on his hands" remark.[345][346] Petition for a new referendum A pro-EU demonstration in Manchester in October 2017 Within hours of the result's announcement, a petition, entitled "EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum" and calling for a second referendum to be held in the event that a result was secured with less than 60% of the vote and on a turnout of less than 75%, attracted tens of thousands of new signatures. The petition had actually been initiated by someone favouring an exit from the EU, one William Oliver Healey of the English Democrats on 24 May 2016, when the Remain faction had been leading in the polls, and had received 22 signatures prior to the referendum result being declared.[347][348][349] On 26 June, Healey made it clear on his Facebook page that the petition had actually been started to favour an exit from the EU and that he was a strong supporter of the Vote Leave and Grassroots Out campaigns. Healey also claimed that the petition had been "hijacked by the remain campaign".[350] English Democrats chairman Robin Tilbrook suggested those who had signed the petition were experiencing "sour grapes" about the result of the referendum.[351] It attracted more than four million signatures, meaning it was considered for debate in Parliament;[352][353] this debate took place on 5 September 2016.[354] On 27 June 2016, David Cameron's spokesperson stated that holding another vote on Britain's membership of the European Union was "not remotely on the cards".[355] Home Secretary Theresa May made the following comment when announcing her candidacy to replace Cameron as Conservative leader (and hence as Prime Minister) on 30 June: "The campaign was fought ... and the public gave their verdict. There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU ... and no second referendum. ... Brexit means Brexit."[356] The petition was rejected by the government on 9 July. Its response said that the referendum vote "must be respected" and that the government "must now prepare for the process to exit the EU".[357] Political Conservative Party Further information: 2016 Conservative Party leadership election Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation following the outcome of the referendum. Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister following the vote. On 24 June, the Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would resign by October because the Leave campaign had been successful in the referendum. The leadership election was scheduled for 9 September. The new leader would be in place before the autumn conference set to begin on 2 October.[358] Unexpectedly, Boris Johnson, who had been a leading figure for Vote Leave, declined to be nominated shortly before the deadline for nominations. On 13 July, almost three weeks after the vote, Theresa May succeeded Cameron as Prime Minister. Labour Party Further information: 2016 Labour Party leadership election (UK) The Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn faced growing criticism from his party, which had supported remaining within the EU, for poor campaigning.[359] On 26 June 2016, Corbyn sacked Hilary Benn (the shadow foreign secretary) for apparently leading a coup against him. This led to a string of Labour MPs quickly resigning their roles in the party.[360][361] A no confidence motion was held on 28 June; Corbyn lost the motion with more than 80% (172) of MPs voting against him.[362] Corbyn responded with a statement that the motion had no "constitutional legitimacy" and that he intended to continue as the party's leader. The vote did not require the party to call a leadership election[363] but after Angela Eagle and Owen Smith launched leadership challenges to Corbyn, the 2016 Labour Party leadership election was triggered. Corbyn won the contest, with a larger share of the vote than in 2015. UK Independence Party On 4 July 2016 Nigel Farage stood down as the leader of UKIP, stating that his "political ambition has been achieved" following the result of the referendum.[364] Following the resignation of the party leader Diane James, Farage became an interim leader on 5 October 2016.[365] He was succeeded by Paul Nuttall on 28 November 2016. Scottish independence Main article: Proposed second Scottish independence referendum Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on 24 June 2016 that it was "clear that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union" and that Scotland had "spoken decisively" with a "strong, unequivocal" vote to remain in the European Union.[366] On the same day, the Scottish Government announced that officials would plan for a "highly likely" second referendum on independence from the United Kingdom and start preparing legislation to that effect.[367] Former First Minister Alex Salmond said that the vote was a "significant and material change" in Scotland's position within the United Kingdom, and that he was certain his party would implement its manifesto on holding a second referendum.[368] Sturgeon said she will communicate to all EU member states that "Scotland has voted to stay in the EU and I intend to discuss all options for doing so."[369] New political movement In reaction to the lack of a unified pro-EU voice following the referendum, the Liberal Democrats and others discussed the launch of a new centre-left political movement.[370] This was officially launched on 24 July 2016 as More United.[371] Economy Main article: Economic effects of Brexit On the morning of 24 June, the pound sterling fell to its lowest level against the US dollar since 1985.[372] The drop over the day was 8% – the biggest one-day fall in the pound since the introduction of floating exchange rates following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971.[373] The FTSE 100 initially fell 8%, then recovered to be 3% down by the close of trading on 24 June.[374] The FTSE 100 index fully recovered by 29 June and subsequently rose above its pre-referendum levels.[375] The referendum result also had an immediate impact on some other countries. The South African rand experienced its largest single-day decline since 2008, dropping over 8% against the United States dollar.[376][377] Other countries affected included Canada, whose stock exchange fell 1.70%,[378] Nigeria[377] and Kenya.[377] On 28 June 2016, former governor of Bank of England Mervyn King said that current governor Mark Carney would help to guide Britain through the next few months, adding that the BOE would undoubtedly lower the temperature of the post-referendum uncertainty, and that British citizens should keep calm, wait and see.[379] On 5 January 2017, Andy Haldane, chief economist and the executive director of monetary analysis and statistics at the Bank of England, admitted that the bank's forecasts (predicting an economic downturn should the referendum favour Brexit) had proved inaccurate given the subsequent strong market performance.[380] He stated that the bank's models "were rather narrow and fragile [and] ill-equipped to making sense of behaviours that were deeply irrational" and said that his "profession is to some degree in crisis" due to this and the unforeseen 2007–2008 crisis.[380][381] Electoral Reform Society In August 2016, the Electoral Reform Society published a highly critical report on the referendum and called for a review of how future events are run. Contrasting it very unfavourably with the 'well-informed grassroots' campaign for Scottish independence, Katie Ghose described it as "dire" with "glaring democratic deficiencies" which left voters bewildered. Ghose noted a generally negative response to establishment figures with 29% of voters saying David Cameron made them more likely to vote leave whereas only 14% said he made them want to vote remain. Looking ahead, the society called for an official organisation to highlight misleading claims and for Office of Communications (Ofcom) to define the role that broadcasters were expected to play.[382] Television coverage The BBC, ITV and Sky News all provided live coverage of the counts and the reaction to the result. The BBC's coverage, presented by David Dimbleby, Laura Kuenssberg and John Curtice, was simulcast domestically on BBC One and the BBC News Channel, and internationally on BBC World News. ITV's coverage was presented by Tom Bradby, Robert Peston and Allegra Stratton. The BBC called the referendum result for Leave with its projected forecast at 04:40 BST on 24 June. David Dimbleby announced it with the words:     Well, at twenty minutes to five, we can now say the decision taken in 1975 by this country to join the Common Market has been reversed by this referendum to leave the EU. We are absolutely clear now that there is no way that the Remain side can win. It looks as if the gap is going to be something like 52 to 48, so a four-point lead for leaving the EU, and that is the result of this referendum, which has been preceded by weeks and months of argument and dispute and all the rest of it. The British people have spoken and the answer is: we're out! (The remark about 1975 was technically incorrect; the UK had joined the Common Market in 1973 and the 1975 referendum was on whether to remain in it.) Television coverage Timeslot Programme Presenters Broadcaster 22:00–06:00 EU Referendum Live Tom Bradby, Robert Peston & Allegra Stratton ITV 06:00–09:30 Good Morning Britain Piers Morgan, Susanna Reid & Charlotte Hawkins 09:30–14:00 ITV News Alastair Stewart 18:00–19:00 ITV News Mark Austin, Robert Peston & Mary Nightingale 22:00–22:45 ITV News Tom Bradby, Robert Peston & Allegra Stratton 21:55–09:00 EU Referendum – The Result David Dimbleby, Laura Kuenssberg & John Curtice BBC 09:00–13:00 EU Referendum – The Reaction Sophie Raworth, Victoria Derbyshire & Norman Smith 13:00–13:45 BBC News at One Sophie Raworth 13:45–14:00 Regional news Various Investigations into campaigns Campaign spending Main article: Allegations of unlawful campaigning in the 2016 EU referendum A protest following the Cambridge Analytica allegations, 29 March 2018 On 9 May 2016, Leave.EU was fined £50,000 by the UK Information Commissioner's Office 'for failing to follow the rules about sending marketing messages': they sent people text messages without having first gained their permission to do so.[383][384] In February 2017, the Electoral Commission announced that it was investigating the spending of Stronger in and Vote Leave, along with smaller parties, as they had not submitted all the necessary invoices, receipts, or details to back up their accounts.[385] In April 2017, the Commission specified that 'there were reasonable grounds to suspect that potential offences under the law may have occurred' in relation to Leave.EU.[386][387] On 4 March 2017, the Information Commissioner's Office also reported that it was 'conducting a wide assessment of the data-protection risks arising from the use of data analytics, including for political purposes' in relation to the Brexit campaign. It was specified that among the organisations to be investigated was Cambridge Analytica and its relationship with the Leave.EU campaign.[388][387] ICO report: Investigation into the use of data analytics in political campaigns In May 2017, The Irish Times reported that £425,622 donated by the Constitutional Research Council to the Democratic Unionist Party for spending during the referendum may have originated in Saudi Arabia.[389] In November 2017, the Electoral Commission said that it was investigating allegations that Arron Banks, an insurance businessman and the largest single financial supporter of Brexit, violated campaign spending laws.[390] The commission's investigation focuses on both Banks and Better for the Country Limited, a company of which Banks is a director and majority shareholder.[391] The company donated £2.4 million to groups supporting British withdrawal from the EU.[390] The investigation began after the Commission found "initial grounds to suspect breaches of electoral law".[392] The Commission specifically seeks to determine "whether or not Mr Banks was the true source of loans reported by a referendum campaigner in his name" and "whether or not Better for the Country Limited was the true source of donations made to referendum campaigners in its name, or if it was acting as an agent".[390] In December 2017, the Electoral Commission announced several fines related to breaches of campaign finance rules during the referendum campaign.[393] The Liberal Democrats were fined £18,000 and Open Britain (formerly Britain Stronger in Europe) paid £1,250 in fines.[393] The maximum possible fine was £20,000.[393] In March 2018, Deutsche Welle reported that Canadian whistleblower Christopher Wylie "told UK lawmakers during a committee hearing...that a firm linked to Cambridge Analytica helped the official Vote Leave campaign [the official pro-Brexit group headed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove] circumvent campaign financing laws during the Brexit referendum".[394] In May 2018, the Electoral Commission fined Leave.EU £70,000 for unlawfully overspending by a minimum of £77,380 – exceeding the statutory spending limit by more than 10%, inaccurately reporting three loans it had received from Aaron Banks totalling £6 million including "a lack of transparency and incorrect reporting around who provided the loans, the dates the loans were entered into, the repayment date and the interest rate", and failing to provide the required invoices for "97 payments of over £200, totalling £80,224". The Electoral Commission's director of political finance and regulation and legal counsel said that the "level of fine we have imposed has been constrained by the cap on the commission's fines".[395][396] In the same month, the Electoral Commission issued a £2,000 fine to the pro-EU campaign group Best for Our Future Limited; it also fined Unison £1,500 for inaccurately reporting a donation to Best for Our Future and failing to pay an invoice; and it fined GMB £500 for inaccurately reporting a donation to Best for Our Future.[397] In July 2018, the Electoral Commission fined Vote Leave £61,000 for not declaring £675,000 incurred under a common plan with BeLeave, unlawfully overspending by £449,079, inaccurately reporting 43 items of spending totalling £236,501, failing to provide the required invoices for "8 payments of over £200, totalling £12,850", and failing to comply with an investigation notice issued by the commission. Darren Grimes representing BeLeave was fined £20,000, the maximum permitted individual fine, for exceeding its spending limit as an unregistered campaigner by more than £660,000 and delivering an inaccurate and incomplete spending return. Veterans for Britain was also fined £250 for inaccurately reporting a donation it received from Vote Leave.[398] The Electoral Commission referred the matter to the police. On 14 September 2018, following a High Court of Justice case, the court found that Vote Leave had received incorrect advice from the UK Electoral Commission, but confirmed that the overspending had been illegal. Vote Leave subsequently said they would not have paid it without the advice.[399][400] In February 2019, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee's 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news published its final report,[401] calling for and inquiry to establish, in relation to the referendum, "what actually happened with regard to foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation, and the sharing of data, so that appropriate changes to the law can be made and lessons can be learnt for future elections and referenda".[402] Speculation about Russian interference Main article: Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, Russian President Vladimir Putin refrained from taking a public position on Brexit,[403] but Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that "Putin might be happy" with Britain leaving the EU,[404] while the Remain campaign accused the Kremlin of secretly backing a "Leave" vote in the referendum.[405] Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova denied these allegations, saying that "Russia is blamed for everything. Not only in the UK but all over the world. (...) But Russia has nothing to do with Brexit at all. We're not involved in this process."[403] Steve Rosenberg, the Moscow correspondent for BBC News, suggested on 26 June 2016 that the Russian government stood to gain from Brexit in several ways: (1) enabling Russian state media "to contrast post-referendum upheaval and uncertainty abroad with a picture of 'stability' back home and images of a 'strong' President Putin at the helm" in a way that bolstered the ruling United Russia party; (2) to place the value of the British pound under pressure and thereby exact retaliation for sanctions against Russia imposed after its occupation of Crimea; (3) to "make the European Union more friendly towards Russia" in the absence of British membership; and (4) to force the resignation of Cameron, who had been critical of Russian actions.[405] After the referendum result Putin said that Brexit brought "positives and negatives".[405] In December 2016, MP Ben Bradshaw speculated in Parliament that Russia may have interfered in the referendum.[406] In February 2017, he called on the GCHQ intelligence service to reveal the information it had on Russian interference.[407] In April 2017, the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee (PACAC) issued a report suggesting that there were technical indications that a June 2016 crash of the voter-registration website was caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack using botnets.[408] The Cabinet Office, in response, stated that it did not believe that "malign intervention" had caused the crash, and instead attributed the crash "to a spike in users just before the registration deadline".[408] In October 2017, MP Damian Collins, chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting documents relating to possible Russian government manipulation of Facebook during the Brexit referendum and the general election the following year.[409] In October 2017, a study by researchers at City, University of London was published in the journal Social Science Computer Review. The article identified 13,493 Twitter accounts that posted a total of about 65,000 messages in the last four weeks of the Brexit referendum campaign, the vast majority campaigning for a "Leave" vote; they were deleted shortly after the referendum.[410][411] A further 26,538 Twitter accounts suddenly changed their username.[411] The research findings "raised questions about the possibility that a coordinated 'bot army' was deployed, and also about the possibility that Twitter itself may have detected and removed them without disclosing the manipulation".[410] In November 2017, the Electoral Commission told The Times that it had launched an inquiry to "examine the growing role of social media in election campaigns amid concerns from the intelligence and security agencies that Russia is trying to destabilise the democratic process in Britain".[412] The commission was in contact with Facebook and Twitter as part of the inquiry.[412] According to Facebook, Russian-based operatives spent 97 cents to place three adverts on the social network in the run-up to the referendum, which were viewed 200 times.[413] On 10 June 2018, The Guardian reported that investigators from The Observer had seen evidence that Leave.EU funder Arron Banks had met Russian officials "multiple times" from 2015 to 2017 and had discussed "a multibillion dollar opportunity to buy Russian goldmines".[414] In July 2020, the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament published a report on Russian interference in British politics, which concluded that the government "had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes" and criticised the government for failing to conduct an assessment of Russian attempts to interfere in the Brexit referendum.[415] Three months later, Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who had decided to look into potential unlawful marketing involving repurposing of data during the referendum, produced her final report. She concluded that she had found no evidence of Russian involvement in the referendum.[416][417] See also     1982 Greenlandic European Communities membership referendum     Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom relating to the European Communities and the European Union     Allegations of unlawful campaigning in the 2016 EU referendum     European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019     Causes of the vote in favour of Brexit     Effect of Brexit on Gibraltar     European Union Bill 2004–2005     European Union law     European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018     European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019 ("Cooper–Letwin Act")     Opinion polling on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union (2016–2020)     Potential United Kingdom rejoining of the European Union     Proposed referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement     Referendums in the United Kingdom     Referendums related to the European Union     Treaty of Accession 1972     Withdrawal from the European Union Notes     The figure widely circulated by the Vote Leave campaign that the UK sends the EU £350m a week was declared a "misuse of official statistics" by the UK Statistics authority.[87] This figure did not take into account the UK's budget rebate. Taking the rebate into account, the UK sent the EU £252m a week in 2016. Later, a private prosecution was launched against Boris Johnson for misconduct in public office; the case was thrown out.[88]     Kaminska, Izabella (8 October 2020). "ICO's final report into Cambridge Analytica invites regulatory questions". Financial Times. Retrieved 23 January 2023. Brexit     Renegotiation Referendum         results Brexit negotiations Brexit withdrawal agreement         NI protocol Trade negotiation Trade and Cooperation Agreement Windsor Framework Timeline Referendum question "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" 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Enlargement Article 50 Procedure Portals:     icon Politics     flag European Union     flag United Kingdom 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum at Wikipedia's sister projects:     Media from Commons     News from Wikinews     Data from Wikidata Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata National     France BnF data Other     IdRef Categories:     2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum2016 in British politics2016 in Gibraltar2016 in the European Union2016 referendumsJune 2016 events in the United KingdomReferendums in the United KingdomReferendums related to the European UnionUnited Kingdom and the European Union Boris Johnson prime minister of United Kingdom      Also known as: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson Written and fact-checked by  Last Updated: Mar 13, 2024 • Article History Boris Johnson Boris Johnson See all media Category: History & Society In full: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson Born: June 19, 1964, New York City, New York, U.S. (age 59) Title / Office: prime minister (2019-2022), United Kingdom mayor (2008-2016), London Political Affiliation: Conservative Party Recent News Mar. 13, 2024, 3:35 AM ET (The Telegraph) Top Questions When did Boris Johnson become the prime minister of the United Kingdom? Where was Boris Johnson born? How many times was Boris Johnson elected mayor of London? What was Boris Johnson's position on Brexit? Did Boris Johnson write a book about Winston Churchill? Boris Johnson (born June 19, 1964, New York City, New York, U.S.) American-born British journalist and Conservative Party politician who became prime minister of the United Kingdom in July 2019. He left office in September 2022 after being forced by scandal to resign. Earlier he served as the second elected mayor of London (2008–16) and as secretary of state for foreign affairs (2016–18) under Prime Minister Theresa May. Early life and career as a journalist As a child, Johnson lived in New York City, London, and Brussels before attending boarding school in England. He won a scholarship to Eton College and later studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was president of the Oxford Union. After briefly working as a management consultant, Johnson embarked on a career in journalism. He started as a reporter for The Times in 1987 but was fired for fabricating a quotation. He then began working for The Daily Telegraph, where he served as a correspondent covering the European Community (1989–94) and later as an assistant editor (1994–99). In 1994 Johnson became a political columnist for The Spectator, and in 1999 he was named the magazine’s editor, continuing in that role until 2005. Election to Parliament In 1997 Johnson was selected as the Conservative candidate for Clwyd South in the House of Commons, but he lost decisively to the Labour Party incumbent Martyn Jones. Soon after, Johnson began appearing on a variety of television shows, beginning in 1998 with the BBC talk program Have I Got News for You. His bumbling demeanour and occasionally irreverent remarks made him a perennial favourite on British talk shows. Johnson again stood for Parliament in 2001, this time winning the contest in the Henley-on-Thames constituency. Though he continued to appear frequently on British television programs and became one of the country’s most-recognized politicians, Johnson’s political rise was threatened on a number of occasions. He was forced to apologize to the city of Liverpool after the publication of an insensitive editorial in The Spectator, and in 2004 he was dismissed from his position as shadow arts minister after rumours surfaced of an affair between Johnson and a journalist. Despite such public rebukes, Johnson was reelected to his parliamentary seat in 2005. Mayor of London Johnson entered into the London mayoral election in July 2007, challenging Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone. During the tightly contested election, he overcame perceptions that he was a gaffe-prone and insubstantial politician by focusing on issues of crime and transportation. On May 1, 2008, Johnson won a narrow victory, seen by many as a repudiation of the national Labour government led by Gordon Brown. Early the following month, Johnson fulfilled a campaign promise by stepping down as MP. In 2012 Johnson was reelected mayor, besting Livingstone again. His win was one of the few bright spots for the Conservative Party in the midterm local elections in which it lost more than 800 seats in England, Scotland, and Wales. While pursuing his political career, Johnson continued to write. His output as an author included Lend Me Your Ears (2003), a collection of essays; Seventy-two Virgins (2004), a novel; and The Dream of Rome (2006), a historical survey of the Roman Empire. In 2014 he added The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History, which was described by one reviewer as a “breathless romp through the life and times” of Winston Churchill. Return to Parliament, the Brexit referendum, and failed pursuit of the Conservative leadership Johnson returned to Parliament in 2015, winning the west London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in an election that saw the Conservative Party capture its first clear majority since the 1990s. He retained his post as mayor of London, and the victory fueled speculation that he would eventually challenge Prime Minister David Cameron for leadership of the Conservative Party. Special offer for students! Check out our special academic rate and excel this spring semester! Some critics, however, charged that Johnson’s personal political ambitions led him to be less interested and less involved in his job as mayor than he was in self-promotion. Even before leaving the office of mayor—having chosen not to run for reelection in 2016—Johnson became the leading spokesman for the “Leave” campaign in the run-up to the June 23, 2016, national referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union. In that capacity, he faced off with Cameron, who was the country’s most prominent proponent of Britain remaining in the EU, and came under criticism for equating the EU’s efforts to unify Europe with those undertaken by Napoleon I and Adolf Hitler. When all of the votes were counted in the referendum, some 52 percent of those who went to the polls had opted for Britain to leave the EU, prompting Cameron to announce his imminent resignation as prime minister. He said that his successor should oversee the negotiations with the EU over Britain’s withdrawal and that he would step down before the Conservative Party conference in October 2016. Many observers believed that the path now had been laid for Johnson’s ascent to the party leadership and the premiership. In the morning at the end of June when he was set to officially announce his candidacy, however, Johnson was deserted by his key ally and prospective campaign chairman, Michael Gove, the justice secretary. Gove, who had worked alongside Johnson on the “Leave” campaign, concluded that Johnson could not “provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead” and, instead of backing Johnson’s candidacy, announced his own. The British media were quick to see betrayals of Shakespearean proportions in the political drama involving Cameron, Johnson, and Gove, whose families had been close and who had moved up the ranks of the Conservative Party together. When he left, Gove took several of Johnson’s key lieutenants with him, and Johnson, seemingly concluding that he no longer had enough support in the party to win its leadership, quickly withdrew his candidacy. Tenure as foreign secretary When Theresa May became Conservative Party leader and prime minister, she named Johnson her foreign secretary. Johnson maintained his seat in the House of Commons in the snap election called by May for June 2017, and he remained foreign secretary when May reshuffled her cabinet after the Conservatives lost their legislative majority in that election and formed a minority government. In April 2018 Johnson defended May’s decision to join the United States and France in the strategic air strikes that were undertaken against the regime of Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad in response to evidence that it had again used chemical weapons on its own people. Opposition parties were critical of the May government’s use of force without having first sought approval from Parliament. Johnson himself was taken to task in some quarters for statements he had made regarding an incident in March 2018 in which a former Russian intelligence officer who had acted as a double agent for Britain was found unconscious with his daughter in Salisbury, England. Investigators believed that the pair had been exposed to a “novichok,” a complex nerve agent that had been developed by the Soviets, but Johnson was accused of misleading the public by saying that Britain’s top military laboratory had determined with certainty that the novichok used in the attack had come from Russia; the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory actually had only identified the substance as a novichok. Nonetheless, the British government was confident enough of the likelihood of Russian complicity in the attack that it expelled nearly two dozen Russian intelligence operatives who had been working in Britain under diplomatic cover. In May 2018 Johnson was the target of a prank—also thought to have been perpetrated by Russia—when a recording was made of a telephone conversation between him and a pair of individuals, one of whom fooled Johnson by pretending to be the new prime minister of Armenia. While all these events unfolded, Johnson remained a persistent advocate of “hard” Brexit as May’s government struggled to formulate the details of its exit strategy for its negotiations with the EU. Johnson publicly (and not always tactfully) cautioned May to not relinquish British autonomy in pursuit of maintaining close economic involvement in the common market. When May summoned her cabinet to Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat, on July 6, 2018, to try to reach a nuts-and-bolts consensus on its Brexit plan, Johnson reportedly was crudely obstinate. Nonetheless, by the gathering’s end, he seemed to have joined the other cabinet members in support of May’s softer approach to Brexit. However, after Brexit secretary David Davis resigned on July 8, saying that he could not continue as Britain’s chief negotiator with the EU because May was “giving too much away, too easily,” Johnson followed suit the next day, tendering his resignation as foreign secretary. In his letter of resignation, Johnson wrote in part: It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of their democracy. They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.… That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt. May named Jeremy Hunt, the long-serving health secretary, as Johnson’s replacement. Ascent to prime minister Meanwhile, Johnson remained a persistent critic of May’s attempts to push her version of Brexit through Parliament. After failing twice to win support for her plan in votes in the House of Commons, May, in a closed-door meeting with rank-and-file members of the Conservative Party on March 27, 2019, pledged to step down as prime minister if Parliament approved her plan. This time around, the promise of May’s imminent departure won Johnson’s support for her plan; however, once again it went down to defeat. Having failed to win sufficient support for her plan from Conservatives, unable to negotiate a compromise with the opposition, and assailed by ever more members of her own party, May announced that she would resign as party leader on June 7 but remain as caretaker prime minister until her party had chosen her successor. This opened up a campaign to replace her that found Johnson among 10 candidates who were put to the parliamentary party in a series of Ivotes that eventually winnowed the field to four contenders: Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, and Sajid Javid, the home secretary. After Gove and Javid fell by the wayside in subsequent votes, Johnson and Hunt stood as the final candidates in an election in which all of the party’s nearly 160,000 members were eligible to vote. Some 87 percent of those eligible voters participated and elevated Johnson to the leadership when the results were announced on July 23. In winning 92,153 votes, Johnson captured some 66 percent of the vote, compared with about 34 percent for Hunt, who garnered 46,656 votes. Johnson had campaigned on a promise to leave the EU without a deal (“no-deal Brexit”) if the exit agreement with the EU was not altered to his satisfaction by October 31, 2019, the revised departure deadline that had been negotiated by May. In his victory speech, he pledged to “deliver Brexit, unite the country, and defeat Jeremy Corbyn” and then rounded out the dud acronym for his pledge to dude by promising to “energize the country.” On July 24 Johnson officially became prime minister. Faced with a threat by Corbyn to hold a vote of confidence and then confronted by a broader effort by opponents of a no-deal Brexit to move toward legislation that would prevent that option for leaving the EU, Johnson boldly announced on August 28 that he had requested the queen to prorogue Parliament, delaying its resumption from its scheduled suspension for the yearly political party conferences. The schedule called for Parliament to convene during the first two weeks of September and then to take a break until October 9. Johnson reset the return date for October 14, just over two weeks before the Brexit deadline. The queen’s approval of the request, a formality, was granted shortly after it was submitted by Johnson. Outraged critics of Johnson’s initiative argued that he was seeking to limit debate and narrow the window of opportunity for taking legislative action on an alternative to a no-deal departure. Johnson denied that this was his intention and emphasized his desire to move forward on Britain’s domestic agenda. Opponents of a no-deal Brexit took the offensive on September 3, as members of the opposition and 21 rebellious Conservative MPs came together on a vote that allowed the House of Commons to temporarily usurp the government’s control of the legislative body’s agenda (as it had earlier done during May’s tenure as prime minister). The 328–301 vote was a humiliating defeat for Johnson, who responded vindictively by effectively expelling the 21 dissident MPs from the Conservative Party. Taking control of the agenda of the House of Commons allowed those opposed to a no-deal Brexit to set the stage for a vote on a bill that would mandate Johnson to request a delay for Brexit. Johnson sought to regain control of the narrative by announcing that he would call for a snap election. Under the Fixed Terms of Parliament Act, however, a prime minister must win the support of at least two-thirds of the House of Commons to hold such an election when it falls outside of the body’s fixed five-year terms, meaning that Johnson would have to win opposition support for that vote. The political drama heightened on September 4, as the House of Commons voted 327–299 to force Johnson to request a delay of the British withdrawal from the EU until January 31, 2020, if by October 19, 2019, he had not either submitted an agreement on Brexit for Parliament’s approval or gotten the House of Commons to approve a no-deal Brexit. By October Johnson was able to find common ground with the EU on a renegotiated agreement that greatly resembled May’s proposal but replaced the backstop with a plan to keep Northern Ireland aligned with the EU for at least four years from the end of the transition period. On October 22 the House of Commons approved Johnson’s revised plan in principle but then quickly stymied his effort to push the agreement through to formal Parliamentary acceptance before the October 31 deadline. Thus, Johnson was compelled to ask the EU for an extension of the deadline, which was granted, and the deadline was reset for January 31, 2020. With no-deal Brexit off the table, Corbyn indicated that he would now support an early election, which was scheduled for December 12. After three failed attempts to hold a snap election, Johnson was finally able to take his case to the people, and during the campaign he promised to deliver Brexit by the new deadline. Although Johnson’s solution to the backstop pitfall looked certain to lose him the support of the Democratic Unionist Party, opinion polling prior to the election showed the Conservatives to be the likely winners and poised to gain seats. When the votes were counted, the projected Conservative victory proved to be wildly more decisive than anyone had expected. In winning 365 seats, the party increased its presence in the House of Commons by 47 seats and recorded its most commanding win in a parliamentary election since 1987. With a solid majority in place, Johnson stood poised to guide his preferred version of Brexit across the finish line. In his address to the British people late on January 31, 2020, as the U.K. formally withdrew from the EU, Johnson said: This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama. Although the formal withdrawal had taken place, final details relating to a new trade deal between the U.K. and the EU remained to be hammered out, and the deadline for agreement on this was set for December 31, 2020. Perhaps not surprisingly, those negotiations also proved to be protracted and often bitter; however, Johnson was able to announce that an accord had been reached on December 24. The 2,000-page agreement specified that there would be no limits or taxes on goods traded between U.K. and EU parties but there would now be a regimen of extensive paperwork for such transactions and for the transport of goods. Moreover, the freedom to live, work, and study in one another’s countries that U.K. nationals and EU citizens had enjoyed would be eliminated for many. Fishing rights, which had proved to be a particular sticking point in the negotiations, were agreed upon for a five-year period only. In late January 2022 an investigation into the affair by senior civil servant Sue Gray was reported to Parliament, though in a truncated and redacted form so as not to compromise the investigation into a number of gatherings that had been subsequently undertaken by the London Metropolitan Police. Gray indicated that “there were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times” and that “some of the events should not have been allowed to take place” whereas “other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.” Johnson apologized again to Parliament and was roundly castigated, even by Conservatives, some of whom joined members of the opposition in calling on the prime minister to step down. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, which united most of the West in support of Ukraine, seemed to forestall the threat to Johnson’s staying in office, as many Britons appeared to feel that the moment of existential crisis for Europe brought on by Russia’s aggression was not the time for a change of leadership. Nevertheless, Johnson’s grip on power remained precarious, especially after the police investigation led to Johnson’s being served a “fixed penalty notice” in April and being fined for his transgression making him the first incumbent British prime minister in living memory found to have broken the law. By the first week of June, fallout from the release of the full report by Gray (in May) and growing discontent with the prime minister’s role in the Partygate scandal had led no fewer than 54 Conservative members of Parliament to send letters to the party’s 1922 Committee requesting Johnson’s resignation. Many of them were concerned that Johnson’s damaged brand would prove to be a liability in the next scheduled parliamentary elections, some two years in the offing. With the number of written requests required to force a vote on leadership of the party having been met, 359 Conservative members of Parliament on the evening of June 6 participated in a secret ballot vote of confidence in Johnson. To survive as leader, Johnson needed to get 180 affirmative votes. He got 211, but the 148 MPs who voted against him constituted roughly 40 percent of the party’s representation in the House of Commons and exceeded in number the 133 MPs who had voted against Theresa May in the 2018 vote of confidence in her leadership that preceded her resignation by some six months. Under party rules, a subsequent vote on Johnson’s leadership could not be held for another year, but, as Britain struggled with inflated prices of fuel and groceries, public approval of the Labour Party was growing in preference polling that did not bode well for Johnson. Moreover, he had very publicly lost the support of prominent Tories such Jeremy Hunt and William Hague. Resignation in disgrace Only weeks after he survived the confidence vote, Johnson’s standing as party leader was further shaken by the loss of two Conservative seats in by-elections on June 24, 2022, in Tiverton and Honiton and in Wakefield. Sexual scandals had forced the resignation of the Conservative MPs holding those seats, and in early July Johnson’s handling of another sexual scandal, involving Conservative Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher, would finally force the resignation of the embattled prime minister whose grip on power had for so long seemed impervious to scandal. This time Johnson and his spokespeople repeatedly changed their story regarding Johnson’s awareness of allegations of sexual misconduct that had been brought against Pincher both in the run-up to his appointment as deputy chief whip and in 2019 during his tenure in the Foreign Office. When Johnson ultimately claimed that he simply had forgotten being briefed about Pincher’s 2019 indiscretion, it proved to be the last straw for two key ministers, Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, who resigned their cabinet posts on July 5. Despite the short-term statutory protection against another vote of confidence in Johnson’s party leadership, his support within the parliamentary Conservative Party continued to crumble, and senior party members threatened to change the party rules to allow for another confidence vote if Johnson did not resign. Despite the multitude of defections, Johnson initially dug in his heels. Indeed, he fired his erstwhile ally Michael Gove from his position as levelling up secretary after Gove joined in pressuring Johnson to resign. Finally, on July 7 Johnson announced his immediate resignation as party leader but said that he would remain as prime minister until the Conservatives had chosen a new leader. On September 6, Liz Truss, Johnson’s foreign secretary, replaced him as prime minister, though her tenure in office would prove to be the shortest in British history. Still immensely popular with the party’s base, Johnson was under consideration as Truss’s replacement despite his fall from grace. During the scramble to choose a new Conservative leader in October, Johnson made a hurried return to Britain from a vacation in the Dominican Republic, but he chose rather quickly to stand aside in deference to Sunak. On June 9, 2023, Johnson received the final report of the Privileges Committee, a cross-party investigatory body that had been tasked with determining whether or not he had willingly misled Parliament during the Partygate scandal. He announced his resignation as MP that day, decrying the committee as a “kangaroo court” that had been determined to “drive me out of Parliament.”
  • Condition: In Excellent Condition
  • Denomination: Brexit
  • Year of Issue: 2016
  • Number of Pieces: 1
  • Time Period: 2000s
  • Fineness: Plated
  • Collection: Brexit
  • Features: Commemorative
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom
  • Certification: Uncertified
  • Country of Origin: England
  • Colour: Silver

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