BRITISH PUBLIC OPINION AS A PREREQUISITE AND FACTOR OF BREXIT (1970–2016S)

Abstract

The article, mainly based on the materials of the British press (The Guardian, BBC News, etc.), reveals the oppositional activities regarding Brexit of the third most influential Liberal Democratic Party of Great Britain. It began in February 2015, when Prime Minister David Cameron officially announced the holding of a referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union,and actually ended in December 2019. when, after the defeat in the national parliamentary elections, the party could not significantly influence this process. The negative consequences for the image of liberal democrats of their stay in the coalition government with conservatives are shown. The content of the program announced by their newly elected leader Tim Farron on May 11, 2016 of the campaign to preserve Great Britain’s membership in the European Union called #INtogether has been revealed. It was found that after the results of the referendum on June 23, 2016, which were unexpected forthe Liberal Democrats, inwhich5 2% of votersvoted for the UK to leave the EU, they were the first to launch a campaign to review its results, using the hashtag #Wearethe48 to appeal to the 48% of voters who supported the Remain position. The manifestos and other program documents with which the Liberal Democrats went to the 2017 and 2019 parliamentary elections and the 2019 European Parliament elections were analyzed. The content of theresolutionsofthe annual September 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 conferences, which determined the party’s position regarding the second referendum on Britain’s membership in the EU and various options for concluding an agreement on relations between them, was considered. It is shown how the election of new leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vince Cable and Joe Swinson, affected the performance of the party, which in May 2019 reachedthepeakofitspopularity,andthereforesuffered a drop in ratings.The conclusions show how the presented political experience of Great Britain is interesting for political science and instructive for the young democracy of Ukraine.