On September 26, 2014, MPs voted 524–43 to approve British participation in the U.S.-led air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also called ISIS) insurgents in Iraq. Cameron made clear that the action would be limited to Iraq and that Britain would not attack ISIL in Syria. Further, he emphasized that Britain would not send troops to take part in a ground war. David Cameron on his own (2015–16) The U.K. general election of 2015
Opinion polling right up to the day before voting indicated that the May 2015 U.K. general election might be the closest in recent memory, as a single percentage point separated the Conservative and Labour parties in most polls. Immigration, the government’s austerity policies, the future of the National Health Service, and Britain’s continued membership in the EU were among the key issues in the campaign. Attempting to address Euroskeptics in his own party and the challenge of UKIP, Cameron promised to renegotiate the terms of British participation in the EU and to put continued EU membership to a national referendum by the end of 2017 if he were reelected. The Conservatives also intimated that if Labour were to win with less than a majority, it would likely form a coalition with the Scottish National Party (SNP) that would drive the government’s agenda with its desire for independence.
When the votes were counted, Cameron and the Conservatives defied the pollsters by capturing 331 seats (a gain of 24 over their showing in 2010), enough to form a majority government without the participation of the Liberal Democrats, whose fortunes plummeted as their party’s representation fell from 57 seats to 8, prompting Clegg’s resignation. Labour leader Miliband stepped down too, after his party won only 232 seats (down 26 from 2010), and watched the SNP blow away Labour’s traditional dominance of elections in Scotland for the U.K. Parliament by increasing its representation in Westminster from 6 seats to 56. Although it captured some 13 percent of the total vote, UKIP won only one seat—a consequence of Britain’s winner-take-all election rules—and Farage, who failed to be elected in his constituency, joined the list of resigning party leaders. The “Brexit” referendum
On December 2, 2015, in the wake of the attacks by Islamist terrorists in Paris on November 13, the House of Commons authorized air strikes by the British military on ISIL targets in Syria. The vote on the measure came after some 10 hours of debate. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn freed members of his party to vote their conscience, and dozens of them broke ranks to join the Conservatives and others in voting for authorization, which passed 397–223.
At a summit meeting of the leaders of the member countries of the EU in Brussels in February 2016, the European Council announced agreement on reforms to British membership that had been requested by Cameron in an attempt to forestall British withdrawal (“Brexit”) from the EU. Although Cameron did not get everything that he had asked for in the proposal that he submitted to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, in November 2015, he won enough concessions to move forward on his promise of a referendum on continued British membership. In the face of considerable support within his own party for Brexit, Cameron nevertheless announced that he would campaign for remaining in the EU and scheduled the referendum for June 23, 2016.
Cameron was joined in the “Remain” effort by Corbyn. The “Leave” campaign was headed by former London mayor Boris Johnson, whom many saw as a rival for Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative Party, and Michael Gove, lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice in Cameron’s cabinet. Opinion polling indicated that the two sides were fairly evenly divided as the referendum approached, but in the event 52 percent of voters opted to leave the EU, making the United Kingdom the first country to ever do so. Cameron announced his intention to resign as prime minister by the time of the Conservative Party conference in October 2016 to allow his successor to negotiate the U.K. withdrawal under the terms of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which, when triggered, would open a two-year window for the exit process.
United Kingdom EU referendumThe majority vote by region in the 2016 referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The premiership of Theresa May (2016– )
The resignation of Cameron, the rise of May, and a challenge to Corbyn’s leadership of Labour
Only days after the Brexit vote, the political drama surrounding Johnson’s pursuit of the Conservative leadership assumed what many observers identified as Shakespearean proportions as Gove removed his prominent support for Johnson’s candidacy, saying that Johnson was “not capable of…leading the party and the country in the way that I would have hoped.” In rapid fashion, a wounded Johnson removed himself from consideration. Gove then threw his hat into the small ring of leadership candidates that was then winnowed by successive votes by parliamentary Conservatives in early July to Home Secretary Theresa May and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, whose names were put to a vote by all party members with results due in September. Almost before that process started, Leadsom unexpectedly withdrew her name from consideration, and on July 11 the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, which had been steering the leadership contest, declared May the new party leader “with immediate effect.” On July 13 Cameron formally resigned, and May became the second woman in British history to serve as prime minister.
Meanwhile, Labour underwent its own leadership controversy as prominent party members, including Blair, took Corbyn to task for not mounting a more vigorous effort on behalf of the “Remain” campaign. No sooner had Blair made his criticism than he found himself in the crosshairs, with the release on July 5 of the so-called Chilcot Report, the findings of a seven-year inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War, which was scathing in its condemnation of Blair’s handling of the war from the initial decision to join the United States in invading Iraq to the Blair government’s failure to plan and prepare for the postwar aftermath in Iraq. Nonetheless, a challenge was mounted to Corbyn’s leadership of the party that eventually resulted in a head-to-head contest between Corbyn and Owen Smith, the former shadow secretary of work and pensions. In an online vote of party faithful in September, Corbyn held on to the leadership by capturing some 62 percent of the vote against about 38 percent for Smith. Triggering Article 50
In the meantime, May, who had opposed Brexit but came into office promising to see it to completion, led her government in cautious movement toward triggering Article 50. Her efforts experienced a setback in January 2017, however, when the Supreme Court upheld a November 2016 High Court ruling that prevented the prime minister from triggering Article 50 without first having gained approval from Parliament to do so. In February 2017 the House of Commons granted May that approval by a 498–114 vote, but the House of Lords created another roadblock in early March by adding a pair of amendments to the bill authorizing May to invoke Article 50. One guaranteed that EU passport holders residing in Britain would be permitted to remain, and the other sought a greater role for Parliament in the negotiations. Both amendments were overturned by the House of Commons later in March, and, before the end of the month, May formally submitted a letter to European Council Pres. Donald Tusk requesting the opening of the two-year window for talks on the details of British separation from the EU.
Against this backdrop, the Scottish Assembly backed First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a new referendum on independence for Scotland to be held before spring 2019 (the majority of Scottish voters had opposed leaving the EU in the Brexit referendum). The Manchester arena bombing and London bridge attacks