Today the referendum was approved by the House of Commons. The lower house of the British Parliament (House of Commons) voted to hold the referendum on the UK out of the EU until the end of 2017. On the background of the publication of the poll, turned out that 51% of Britons want to leave the European Union. This technical stage of agreeing on the terms of the plebiscite was a blow to Prime Minister David Cameron.
On Monday protracted till late night members of the House of Commons supported the plebiscite with 316 votes. Only 53 MP were against. The next formal step that brings the day of the plebiscite, will be the vote in the House of lords — the upper house of Parliament.
Technical negotiation phase of the referendum turned into an active debate about the conditions and the details of its organization. The bill on the referendum was submitted to the Parliament by the government: Prime Minister Cameron, who made the referendum a key campaign promises, still expects to maintain a strong relationship between London and Brussels. However, the House of Commons did not approve a number of details of a referendum proposed by Prime Minister.
For example, as previously reported, the decisive question will be formulated as follows: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” Now the opposition has made changes to the words of the main question “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”.
Choose the correct answer for themselves Britons will be able in the next two years, until the end of 2017. The ability of the government to agitate for the preservation of EU membership after the debate in the House of Commons was limited — the decision of the deputies was the first defeat of Prime Minister Cameron in Parliament after the may national elections.
At the same time until now the government had some reasons to rely on the preservation of Britain’s membership in the EU: all polls confidently showed small advantage of the proponents of a European passport. However, the results of a survey published in the weekend edition of the Mail on Sunday showed that support an EU exit could be still 51% of respondents (against 49% who want to remain in the EU). The results of the survey probably linked with erupted migration crisis in Europe, so many residents of the United Kingdom would like to distance themselves from it.