-On June 23, 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union.
Voters sided immigration and sovereignty
as their top reasons for leaving,
but more than three years later,
the United Kingdom is still part of the EU.
The original departure date was set for March 29, 2019,
but after a series of events,
that deadline was extended to October 31, 2019.
And then came another extension.
-Order! People are just sticking --
-Now the deadline for Britain to leave Europe
is January 31, 2020.
But before that can happen,
the UK will hold an election on December 12th.
And the outcome of that election
will not only shape how Brexit happens
but perhaps even if Brexit happens at all.
-It's pretty unusual to have a December election in the UK.
This is the first time in roughly 100 years
there's been one.
Boris Johnson wanted an election after he was unable
to get his withdrawal agreement through parliament in time.
The reason that he couldn't get his withdrawal agreement
through parliament before the October 31st deadline
was because he basically doesn't have a parliament
who supports his view of Brexit.
His hope is that by having a new election,
he can get more lawmakers who approve of his idea of Brexit
and help him get out of the EU
before the January 31st deadline.
-Let's get Brexit done
and unleash the potential of the whole United Kingdom.
-Even though Johnson is getting the election he wanted,
it's still a risky move for the prime minister.
-For Boris, the worst-case scenario
is that rather than get a majority in parliament,
he actually loses more seats and allows someone,
probably Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party
or perhaps even someone else,
to form a government and he loses the government.
Boris is actually running in a seat himself.
He's a member of parliament.
So in theory, if he loses that seat,
he can't be prime minister,
even if the conservatives win the election.
It's a calculated risk, basically.
Like, when you look at the polls,
the likelihood is that he'll keep government,
he'll probably be able to get a majority,
and that would just make his life so much easier,
and everything is going forward.
So, it makes sense why he wanted to do it, but it is a risk.
And Boris Johnson's conservatives are pretty
considerably ahead in the polls by about 10 percentage points.
That doesn't mean that they'll win.
Britain has to first pass the post-electoral system,
which means that, you know, percentage polls
don't necessarily tell you who's gonna win,
who can form a government.
And there's also the fact that Jeremy Corbyn,
the major opposition leader,
he's shown himself to be very good in the campaign trail.
He presents a very different view of Britain than Boris does.
When he was up against Theresa May,
he came back from 20 points behind to prevent her
from getting a majority government
and force her into minority government
that is now Boris Johnson's whole problem.
So if he's come from 20 points behind before,
10 points behind suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
-If you watched the debate, you'll have heard Boris Johnson
claim that he'll get Brexit done over and over
and over and over and over again.
He might still be saying it for all I know.
That claim is a fraud on the British people.
With Labour, it will be very different.
We will get Brexit sorted within six months.
-So, the Labour party, they're not anti-Brexit.
They say they want a softer Brexit where the UK stays
much more in line with the EU
than it would have done in other situations.
Boris wants a much harder break,
which would cause more disruption
but also enable the UK to have more say in how it governs
and how it makes trade deals
with the United States, for example.
It could speed up the process of Brexit
if Boris Johnson can get a sort of overwhelming majority,
he could push through a lot of laws.
He could push for his deal in the final rounds of negotiation.
He could push through trade deals and things like that.
-However, the election outcome could also massively
slow down Brexit.
-If Boris loses government, the likelihood is that
whoever succeeds him will have to go back to the EU
and negotiate a new withdrawal agreement,
which presumably would mean another extension
and however many more months or years of Brexit negotiations.
The bigger issue is if the opposition parties --
Labour, Liberal Democrats, the Greens,
the nationalist parties --
can somehow sort of band together in a way
that presents a very real threat to him,
because when you look at opinion polls,
there's actually more people who oppose
the government than support it,
but they're scattered amongst different parties.
-If Jeremy Corbyn or another prime minister succeeds Johnson,
they might even take Brexit back to the British public
with a second referendum,
which could mean Britain does not leave the EU after all.