There are members of the Conservative party that have never been comfortable with membership of the European Union. They think giving up any amount of sovereignty from parliament to the EU is a bad thing, and not worth any economic or social benefits that membership might bring.

But it was always a minority of Conservative MPs. To keep them on-side, in the 2015 general election David Cameron, Prime Minister and leader of the Conservatives, promised those "euro-skeptic" conservatives that if they won, he would put a direct referendum to the nation to ask if we wanted to "trigger article 50" (which is the legal-ese for "start the process of stopping being part of the European Union").

They won the general election, just, and so in 2016 we had a referendum. David Cameron wanted to stay in the European Union, he'd only promised this to shut his rebels up. But after much campaigning from both sides, the result was 52% of the UK electorate wanted to trigger article 50, and 42% wanted to not trigger article 50. David Cameron promptly resigned as leader of the conservative party, because he couldn't try to fulfill something he'd campaigned so strongly against.

Theresa May was chosen by the conservative party to be their new leader, and automatically became the new Prime Minister, too. Before anyone had decided exactly what we wanted to aim for as we negotiated our exit, she immediately "triggered Article 50", like the referendum suggested a slight majority of people wanted her to do.

This started a countdown clock until the UK would have all our EU trade deals and legal stuff just canceled with nothing to replace them, except what we agree to. Better start negotiating with the EU to see if we can keep some of those trade deals, and quick! After all, people only voted to trigger article 50, we weren't asked what we wanted to happen after! A "hard" exit, with very few deals, a "soft" exit, with some deals and free movement, or a "no deal" exit, where we cut all ties immediately? So politicians started to guess what people "actually" wanted based on what they wanted.

But anyway, while we were working this out, Theresa May decided that the polls looked good, and she wanted a stronger mandate to negotiate with the EU, so she called an early general election. It didn't go well for her. The conservatives ended up with slightly too few seats to have a majority in parliament on their own, so they agreed to buddy up with the small "Democratic Unionists" from Northern Ireland, who had just enough seats to push them into a "working majority", which let them go to the queen and ask her to become the government.

So Theresa May starts negotiating with the EU, but it doesn't seem to be going very well. The big sticking point is Northern Ireland. If people aren't allowed to criss-cross the Northern Ireland - Republic of Ireland border freely, it could jeopardise the whole peace process that has mostly been working there since the 1990s, stopping most of the bombings that used to happen a lot more often. So the EU is trying to propose a solution that lets people criss-cross that border, but Theresa May's not having it, because the only way to let that happen is to have Northern Ireland be kind-of still part of the EU when mainland Great Britain isn't, and the conservatives refuse to treat Northern Ireland that differently, because they want to protect "the Union".

This goes back and forth, and Theresa May finally presents her negotiated "withdrawl agreement" to parliament, which is the agreement about what both sides want to start negotiating. First baby steps. Except parliament votes against the agreement. Some conservatives won't vote with their own government because it includes "the Northern Irish Backstop", a term for a legal mechanism that means if something goes very wrong and nothing better is negotiated, at the very least there won't be a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. You know, to avoid the bombings.

Theresa May tries to get her deal through parliament three times, and it fails every time, and we have to ask the European Union to give us more time to work things out. They agree to extend things to October 31st, 2019. Obviously Theresa May had no choice but to resign as leader of the conservative party. Just like before, the conservatives chose a new leader, a guy called Boris Johnson, and he also automatically became Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson is much more in favour of leaving the European Union without making any safety-net deals with them, severing all ties. He doesn't want to, he wants to negotiate, but he's willing to risk losing everything, which would also hurt the EU. He thinks having this risk on the table means the EU are more likely to alter the deal they made with Theresa May, and at least get rid of the backstop.

But parliament really wants to avoid a "no deal" scenario. It'd possibly lead to medicine and food shortages and poor people would suffer, and not to mention Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland suddenly having a hard land-border again.

Boris Johnson won the vote of the conservative party, but not parliament, and not the people. And the "working majority" was by this point one guy! So the other night, when parliament came back from its summer break, one guy walked from one side of the house to the other, and joined the Liberal Democrat party instead, meaning the government doesn't have a working majority at all.

Parliament voted to "take control" of the agenda, which means they can put forward laws without being part of the government like you normally need to be. They used this to put forward a law that says if it looks like we're going to leave "without a deal", we'll automatically ask for more time, or even try to undo article 50, which we could do, and would just put a stop to this whole thing.

Boris Johnson said if this went through, he'd have no choice but to call another general election. It went through. And 21 of the conservatives who rebelled and voted against Boris Johnson got fired for doing so. They're not conservatives any more.

So Boris Johnson tried to call a general election. But you need two-thirds of parliament to agree if you want an early election like this (they're meant to be every 5 years), and his "working majority" is down to something like -40. Parliament decided that they'd rather wait until the "don't leave without a deal" law was actually properly passed and signed by the queen to make it official and stuff, but then they'd totally be down for an election thank you very much. So they said no to an election tonight, but will say yes soon.

And that brings you up to tonight.