Brexit is official: Article 50 is invoked.

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, July 12, 2026 14:06
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JAYNEZTOWN

Tuesday, January 31, 2023 9:08 PM

UK economy only G7 nation to shrink in 2023 - IMF

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64452995

Sunak under fire for silence on costs of Brexit to UK three years after leaving EU

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-economy-harm-britain-t
hree-years-cost-rishi-sunak-eu-b1056763.html?amp

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6IXSTRINGJACK

Tuesday, January 31, 2023 10:21 PM

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
UK economy only G7 nation to shrink in 2023 - IMF

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64452995

Sunak under fire for silence on costs of Brexit to UK three years after leaving EU

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-economy-harm-britain-t
hree-years-cost-rishi-sunak-eu-b1056763.html?amp

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THG

Saturday, May 20, 2023 3:40 AM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Credit where credit is due: Nigel Farage helped craft the Conservative win.

I have to say that Farage is an extremely intelligent and focused person who keeps his eyes on the prize (Brexit) and not on his party. The decision to pull candidates from so many Conservative-dominated districts must have been a very difficult one and earned him a lot of criticism from within his own party, but was ultimately the best course of action in terms of aiming towards Brexit.

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The Brexit party folded, but make no mistake: Farage won it for Johnson
Darren Loucaides

Whatever Nigel Farage does next, his decision to stand aside against 317 Tories and target Labour leavers was monumental

Last modified on Fri 13 Dec 2019 10.10 EST

Until 11 November, many had assumed that Nigel Farage’s Brexit party was revving up for a general election. But that morning, Farage told an audience of supporters and journalists in Hartlepool that his Brexit party would be standing down in 317 Conservative-held seats to avoid splitting the leave vote. The audience was stunned; there was muted applause after he finished.

This election will be remembered as a resounding, crushing victory for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. Just as has happened countless times before, Farage will be written off and ridiculed for his party not winning a single seat. But that morning of 11 November was the single most important moment of the campaign. Farage won it for Johnson.

The decision to stand down against the Tories was not an easy one. According to Ed Jankowski, who was the Brexit party’s digital strategist until the middle of November before resigning, Farage was for a long time eager to stand in every seat and not stand down – as he was being pressured to do by his erstwhile Leave.EU ally Arron Banks. Farage instead kept pushing a leave alliance that the Tories were never likely to officially agree to. But as the Brexit party started to flag in the polls, Farage lost his nerve and gave in to those not wanting to challenge Conservative seats.

In Farage’s speech, and in the weeks following, he pledged to scoop up the leave vote in Labour heartlands and places people were unlikely to ever vote Tory. As for Jankowski, he told me that he pushed hard to get a detailed data set of Labour leavers. If he had stayed on, Jankowski says he would have pushed for the Brexit party to hone its digital content so that it made a strong emotional appeal to those voters.

Instead of the sophisticated digital campaign Jankowski envisaged, the wheels seemed to come off the Brexit party campaign. Farage’s close ally Alexandra Phillips, who used to be his head of media at Ukip, publicly criticised the decision to stand down, saying she felt “disenfranchised” for not being able to vote Brexit party in her own Conservative-held constituency. Farage and the party chairman, Richard Tice, are also rumoured to have fallen out over strategy, with Farage no longer showing up in the seat Tice stood in Hartlepool.

Farage spent the rest of the campaign travelling predominantly to Labour leave seats, albeit to greatly diminished crowds compared to the big rallies seen earlier in the year. But while the shine had gone from the Brexit party, and it ended up winning no seats, its campaign has had a major impact on the election.

One of the early results of the election night, a Labour hold in Sunderland Central by 2,964 votes, was striking for the swing. Labour was down 13.4%, Conservatives up slightly by 2%, while the Brexit party had a swing of 11.6% from a standing start. When the first 10 seats were in, in mostly northern and Midlands seats, there was nearly a 10% drop for Labour, while the Conservatives were only up 2.1% and the Brexit party was scooping up a 6% swing.

In some places the Conservatives gained seats from Labour on modest swings, while the Brexit party got swings of more than 10%. In Don Valley, Caroline Flint’s 2017 majority of 5,169 appears to have been swallowed up by the Brexit party – which won 6,24

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