Proposed referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement

rdf:langString Proposed referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement

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rdf:langString With "Neither" responses

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rdf:langString Opinion polling on whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU

rdf:langString Brexit_post-referendum_polling_-_Remain-Leave.svg

rdf:langString Brexit_post-referendum_polling_-_Remain-Leave-Neither.svg

rdf:langString *Guto Bebb

rdf:langString *Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Opposition *Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party *Keir Starmer, Shadow Brexit Secretary

rdf:langString Independent MPs who advocated a referendum on the proposed withdrawal agreement

rdf:langString Labour Party MPs who advocated a referendum on the proposed withdrawal agreement

rdf:langString A referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, also referred to as a "second referendum", a "rerun", a "people's vote", or a "confirmatory public vote", was proposed by a number of politicians and pressure groups as a way to break the deadlock during the 2017–19 Parliament surrounding the meaningful vote on the Brexit deal. Following the invocation of Article 50 to begin Brexit negotiations, most proposals for a new referendum suggested a choice between accepting the negotiated withdrawal agreement and remaining in the EU, sometimes with the additional option to leave the EU with no deal. In the case of a three-option referendum, voting systems such as supplementary vote, and Borda count were suggested to allow people to state their second preferences. Reasons that were cited as justification include campaign finance violations by Vote Leave and Leave.EU, the alleged use of data illicitly harvested by Cambridge Analytica, revelations of Russian interference through fake social media accounts and allegedly through funding, arguments that the "Leave" camp promoted misinformation, a gradual shift in public opinion, fuelled in part by demographic changes such as adolescents who were too young to take part in the first referendum reaching voting age, and that the eventually-arranged terms of Brexit were unknown at the time of the original vote. The most widely discussed proposal was a referendum between "Remain" and "Accept the deal", which was promoted by the People's Vote pressure group. This was the official position of the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party of England and Wales, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party. The Labour Party also adopted this position in September 2019. The Conservative Party and Brexit Party were opposed to any referendum. On 12 December 2019, the Conservative Party, led by Boris Johnson, won an 80-seat overall majority in the 2019 general election, ending the possibility of any referendum on the withdrawal agreement being held before ratification by the UK Parliament or before the UK left the European Union. Subsequently, the UK Parliament passed the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 which received Royal Assent on 23 January 2020, and the United Kingdom formally left the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020.

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