CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF BREXIT: HOW EU MEMBERSHIP AND EXIT AFFECTED BASIC UK CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES

Over the past six years the term “Brexit” has become part of our every-day language. Newspapers, politicians, scholars (and so on) have talked about it for a very long time and they have analysed almost every facet of this process. The term defines the procedure, triggered by the 2016 referendum, through which Britain (more precisely the whole UK) exited the European Union, hence Br-exit. Enough literature analyses the reasons why the UK decided to leave, how it actually left and the main legal hurdles that came with it. What we will argue here, however, is slightly different. Though going into the specifics of both remote and close causes for Brexit and taking a look at the process itself, our approach dives into the Constitutional changes and problems that came with it. To be more precise, we will try to demonstrate that all the key constitutional changes triggered by both Brexit and EU membership were characterised by a common underlying narrative: the struggle between the will to follow new developments (especially for economic reasons) and the will to maintain the status quo (especially concerning the core institutions of the British system). To better understand why this is, we will divide the analysis into three chapters. The first one will consider all the key constitutional principles of both systems and how they initially clashed. This will be fundamental to better grasp all the problems both since the creation of the EU and all throughout the years of UK membership that arose between the two, as will be described by chapter two. This second section, taken together with the first one, will eventually stand to demonstrate that, right because of these clashes and deep transformations, Brexit was, if not inevitable, at least predictable and a long way coming. Finally, chapter three will focus on all the developments that took place in the last decade or so, demonstrating that, though the main (at least the most cited one) purpose of the referendum for the leavers campaign had been to erase all the changes brought about by the EU membership, the very process of Brexit actually changed some basic constitutional arrangements again.