On March 29th, 2019, the UK is supposed to be leaving the European Union.
However, leaving next week would mean leaving with a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. This means that we would have no deal about trade, no deal about immigration and no deal about the Irish border. It almost seems insane that we voted to leave the EU over two years ago and are still in this situation with zero deals in place for when the day comes.
Over recent months, many different proposals have been put forward by the Prime Minister and shot down. On two seperate occassions, Parliament has shot down the Prime Minister’s agreement with the EU.
There have been calls for her resignation, both from the Opposition (Labour) and from within the Conservative Party. Before May’s most recent parliamentary defeat, some MPs suggested that they would accept her proposal, if she stepped aside.
The Prime Minister is now asking to extend the divorce period until June 30th. She is hoping that this will provide enough time to come up with a proposal that MPs, the people and the European Union will agree on. The EU, on the other hand is not happy with this proposal and is asking for Brexit to end on May 22nd.
Despite much debate over how to proceed with Brexit, one thing MPs agree on is that we will not be getting a second referendum. However, the people are not happy with the government making these decisions. A petition created by Margaret Anne Georgiadou on the Government’s website, caused the site to crash after it started gaining over 1,000 signatures a minute. As of Wednesday evening, the petition had less than 200,000 signatures. The sharp rise in interest in the petition is thought to have been caused by Theresa May blaming the delay of Brexit on MPs.
The petition to revoke Article 50 [the trigger of Brexit] and remain in the EU, caused the website to crash on Thursday morning when it had roughly 650,000 signatures. Later in the day, around 12pm, the petition had 780,000. At the time of publication of this article, the petition had over 3,000,000 signatures. More information following the progression of the petition can be found on The Guardian.
The people clearly want their say. The #putittothepeoplemarch is happening on March 23rd – a week before our official divorce from the EU. The march is expected to be monumental, with The Independent reporting that at least 159 coach services have been set up to take people to the event from all corners of the country. Over £650,000 has been raised for the event, which starts at Marble Arch and ends outside the Houses of Parliament. More information can be found on the march’s Facebook event page, which currently has over 18,000 people marked as attending and 29,000 people marked as interested.
This march is the people’s chance to express their feelings. It is a time for us to rally and express our annoyance at the handling of Brexit. This is not a march for leavers or remainers. It is a march for the people, the people who want to be included in the decisions made about the future of their country. Event organisers say: “Our demand is a simple one: that any Brexit is put to the people so that we can have the final say. This will be a day to tell your children about, to tell your grandchildren about.”