After nearly four years, MPs in the British parliament on Friday voted overwhelmingly to approved Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan for the UK to leave the European Union on January 31st, 2020.
In a 358 to 234 vote, the House of Commons passed the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which will now be examined further and possibly amended before it’s sent to the House of Lord’s next month, the BBC reports.
Following the vote, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK is now “one step closer to getting Brexit done”. Johnson said that the Brexit deal that’s in place will finally put an end to the “acrimony and anguish” that’s plagued the country over the past three years.
“Now is the time to act together as one reinvigorated nation, one United Kingdom, filled with renewed confidence in our national destiny and determined at last to take advantage of the opportunities that now lie before us,” Johnson said.
Jeremy Corbyn, the embattled Labor leader who’s largely been blamed for the party’s worst election in years, instructed his MPs to oppose the bill, arguing that there was a “better and fairer way” to leave the European Union. Despite is commands, six Labor MPs backed the bill anyway.
The bill had been expected to pass without issue after earlier in the month, the Conservatives won an astonishing electoral victory, winning 365 seats in the country’s lower lawmaking body in what was the best result for the party since 1987.
An earlier Brexit deal that was agreed upon by then Prime Minister Theresa May, Conservative MPs, and the EU was rejected three times, ultimately leading to May to step down as the leader of the Conservative party.
The people speak in the home of Democracy and the people they elect to carry out their will respond 4 years later. Does not justice delayed is justice denied apply to these well fed, self-seeking bureaucrats?