Welcome back to bribes,windle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Rogge and we're veering away from financial crime today to discuss a topic of more general interest.

What on earth is going on in Britain? Well, the US is preoccupied with the fact that its government has hung out a

closed-for-business sign, there is considerable turmoil across the Atlantic. My guest today is

Michelle de Cluva. Michelle is a partner with Adelshaw Goddard on the corporate crime and investigations

team. She's an expert on complex financial crime investigations and a great

friend of Trace. Thank you for joining me on short notice, Michelle. I'm delighted to be chatting

to you today, Alexandra. We're hearing about soft Brexit and no-deal Brexit and a possible re-vote and

votes of no confidence. Help us understand what's going on. I think everyone in the UK would also like to understand what's going on.

But I'll try and capture it as succinctly as I can.

So all this began really on the 23rd of June, 2016, when the UK held a referendum

about whether the UK should remain within the EU or should exit the EU.

So those who wanted to remain were called Remainers and those who wanted to leave the European Union

became known as Brexiteers. And there was, as you might expect, a lot of

campaigning on both sides. And then I think the sort of very unexpected result that the majority

of the UK population, small majority, voted to leave the European Union. There's actually a formal

process under the Lisbon Treaty for leaving the EU. And that's sort of triggered by the filing

of what's called an Article 50 notice.

And that didn't happen until March of the following year.

But that filing of that notice sets the clock ticking really.

And it meant that the UK had a couple of years to negotiate a deal with the EU about what its relationship,

trading relationship, legal relationship was going to be going forward.

And that's really what's occupied Theresa May's government basically since she became Prime Minister.

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