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Indy100 Staff
Mar 29, 2017
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Theresa May has triggered the formal process to leave the European Union, after sending a letter to Donald Tusk invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage was one of the first to celebrate, and said he was “thrilled” that Britain is now “past the point of no return”.
However, he also admitted that if Brexit negotiations turned out to be a "disaster", he would:
Go and live abroad. I will go and live somewhere else.
Others were less happy about the state of affairs, with EU council president Donald Tusk saying, shortly after receiving the letter, that there was "no reason to pretend this is a happy day”.
The relationship between the EU and Britain has been one fraught with conflict, and the following tweet sums up why:
Britain has had a number of special privileges not afforded to many other EU member states, such as retaining its pound (£) currency.
Additionally, the UK is one of few countries who is a member of the EU but not of the Schengen Area – which has officially abolished passport and border controls on mutual EU country's borders.
And yet...
Despite this, the fears over increased migration levels meant that the leave campaign pushed the subject to the forefront of its campaign.
There is, by the way, little in the way of proof to show that leaving the EU would decrease immigration.
More: A European diplomat just said what we all feared about Brexit