BRUSSELS-LONDON NEGOTIATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PARTY-POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON BREXIT (2013 – JUNE 2016)

Abstract

The article examines the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union on the eve of the referendum on Brexit on June 23, 2016, through the prism of the party-political discourse. The leader of the Conservatives and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, played a key role in these processes. The genesis and chronology of the unfolding of the socio-political discourse on the referendum are reconstructed: the NATO summit in May 2012, where the Prime Minister and some members of the Government almost for the first time discussed the idea of holding a referendum as a concession to the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party; the unsuccessful initiatives of its deputies, who in June 2012 and November 2013 privately introduced bills in the House of Commons on revising the terms of the United Kingdom’s membership in the EU and the country’s withdrawal from it; the milestone speech by D. Cameron on January 23, 2013 at Bloomberg; the bill published by the Conservative Party on May 14, 2013, which determined the time of the referendum and the formulation of the question to be voted on; the «alternative» bill on the referendum of the Conservative Bob Neill, etc. The attitude of the Conservative, Labor, Liberal Democratic parties, the UK Independence Party, the Green Party, and the Democratic Unionist Party towards the Brexit referendum and the results of their participation in the 2014 European Parliament elections are shown. Against this background, the course of negotiations between London and Brussels on the revision of the terms of the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union is traced, which concerned the problem of migration, the liberalization of the Single Market, the restoration of the sovereign rights of the United Kingdom, its exclusion from the political process to achieve the «closest possible union» between EU member states, etc. Based on the actions and statements of D. Cameron, the key thesis of the study is substantiated: if the negotiations between London and Brussels on revising the status and position of the United Kingdom in the EU had been successful and it had received real concessions, the results of the referendum on June 23, 2016, in which 51.9% of Britons voted for the country’s withdrawal from the EU, could have been different.