We ' ve basically been saying that since the day after the referendum . There ' s not much we can do to force them to invoke it though , afaik . It ' s an internal British matter , and to be fair to them , the referendum was advisory despite claims to the contrary , and they hadn ' t looked at how exactly invoking leaving the EU would work on their side . You ' d think that was something you ' d want to do before calling a referendum on it , but no . So now they have a government that wasn ' t elected after the old one resigned , a parliament that was but is majority proremain and a narrow majority proBrexit in the electorate . Also Scotland wants to stay in the EU and had made their referendum to stay in the UK under the impression that they ' d all stay in the EU together .