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The EU is like a club that countries can join. The club has rules, one of which is called Article 50 and was written by a British guy. Article 50 says how countries can leave the club, and that it takes two years during which time they have to negotiate the terms they want to leave on.

A lot of people in Britain like being in the club, and a lot of businesses have come to rely on the benefits of membership like being able to sell their stuff to other club member countries. So to keep them happy the Prime Minister wants to keep some of the benefits of membership. But other people don't like the club and just want out completely, and she wants to make them happy too.

Because it's impossible to keep everyone happy and no-one really thought this through back when the vote happened, it's all become a bit of mess.

Imagine two teenage siblings who don't want to live with their parents anymore. They hate all the rules they have to follow in their house.

(1) What exactly does leaving the EU entail? Just writing some letter announcing that EU tariff agreements will no longer be honored?

They could just leave the house indeed [hard Brexit]. The youngest sibling just wants this, but the oldest one realizes the risks: no food, no money [the UK strongly depends on trade with the EU].

(2) If voters in the UK chose to leave the EU (what years ago??), why have the concrete steps from (1) not been done?

For the past three years the two siblings have been fighting about their plan: just walk away assuming that kind strangers will provide for them [negotiate new trade deals with other countries], or stay in good terms with the parents and keep their allowance? [accepting some of the EU rules in order to maintain prosperity]

(3) Does the current prime minister want to leave the EU or not? If yes, what prevents the prime minister from unilaterally disavowing whatever harebrained treaties constitute the bond with continental Europe?

To keep with the metaphor, it's as if the prime minister has a double personality disorder: she hears the two teenagers' voices in her head and she keeps trying to satisfy both of them. She fails, because it's impossible.

This is really broad, and quite a bit longer than just a sentence or two, but in language a 10 year old might understand:

Oversimplified short version

Liars and frauds told UK voters they'd get fairies and unicorns if the UK exited the EU. Some voters fell for it; others went fishing instead of voting.

Since then, the UK government has delivered the best deal it can get without putting too much stress on the economy, and asked MPs to approve it. But MPs rejected the PM's deal -- twice.

They did so because they think staying an EU member is simply better, or because they really do believe in fairies and unicorns.

Somewhat simplified longer version

Re 1) and 2): Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union lays out rules on how an EU member state can leave the EU. May triggered the process just under 2 years ago.

The UK then began a negotiation with the EU to work out a divorce deal. To come into effect, this deal must get approved by the UK and by the EU. The UK parliament has rejected it twice.

Article 50 also says that there's a deadline of 2 years to work out this divorce deal. This is why there was talk of a no deal Brexit for the past two years. The EU can extend the negotiation period if all of its remaining members agree to it -- which they did at last week's EU summit.

The new important dates are April 12th, by which the UK will crash out without a deal unless parliament passes the divorce deal this week or comes up with a new plan by then; and May 22nd, which is the latest the UK can delay Brexit without participating in EU elections.

Re 3): During the Brexit campaign, May was a late and unenthusiastic Remain backer, for reasons not unlike those of Corbyn -- it was the party line.

Since then, May has embraced the Brexit decision and become a staunch Leaver. She's been standing firm, at times against even her own parliament, to deliver what she understands is what UK voters said they wanted when they voted Brexit: out of the customs union, out of the common market, and out of the ECJ's jurisdiction.

She's on record for not wanting a second referendum, because it's too divisive, and because the risk that voters no longer care about politics is too high. She's also on the record for not wanting any or much of a delay to the Brexit process, because too long a delay might end up meaning new EU elections (a non-starter for a country that's leaving), or even no Brexit at all if things drag on for too long.

Aside

With the above answer in mind, I think there's an underlying assumption in your question that ought to be addressed because you seem to be sold on the notion that the UK can just burn the "harebrained" treaties to the ground and shrug off the consequences. It's not that simple.

Leaving the EU entails hitting the reset button on:

• The international agreements the UK is involved in through the EU, be them with parties external to the EU (e.g. EU trade deals with Canada or Japan, EU air travel arrangements that allow UK airlines to fly outside of the UK's airspace and foreign airlines to fly inside UK airspace) or internal to the EU (e.g. fishing rights inside EU waters, etc.).




• Common market-related regulation, ranging from trivial looking matters, as mocked in this Yes, Minister sketch, that aim to make products reasonably comparable across the EU, to more important matters like food standards (e.g. banning chlorinated chicken). The EU goal in most cases here revolves around safety, quality standards, and removing non-tariff trade barriers. The safety standards alone are good enough a reason to inspect anything crossing the UK-EU border in the event of no deal, and that can put supply chains (food, auto parts, etc.) in jeopardy.




• Freedom of movement of goods, capital, services, and labour, which the EU has made clear again and again are all or nothing. A major side effect of this is the customs union, and what that entails for the Northern Ireland border. Another major one is whether UK-based banks (a significant part of the economy) are allowed to operate in the EU.

What caught the imagination of planners and the media are the future Dover-Calais border-related deadlock, grounded flights, food and medical shortages, and so forth. But these are only aspects of what a No Deal scenario might look like.

Also, there's a slew of much less abstract problems that need a response before the UK formally leaves. To list but a few:

• UK budgetary commitments to EU projects -- will the UK based projects get funded if the UK refuses to honor its financial commitments?




• UK officials who retire on an EU pension -- who funds this if the UK refuses to honor its financial commitments?




• UK students who are studying in the EU, and vice versa -- who pays for their university fees if the current arrangements get cancelled?




• UK workers living in the EU, and vice versa -- do they still have the right to live and work where they are in the event of a no deal Brexit?




• UK retirees in Spain and elsewhere -- does the NHS continue to pay for their medical bills, and on what terms?




• The Northern Irish border -- should the UK respect the Good Friday Agreement or is it ready to risk the resurgence of The Troubles?

These little details add up, and directly affect millions of people. It's not like you can go "screw this" and to hell with the consequences.

The EU is not just about tariffs, it's a whole legal framework. It details what products can be sold and how, how farming and fishing is carried out, how truck and plane companies can operate internationally, who is allowed to live and work in other countries, and so on. This covers a lot of law. (The acquis communitaire).

Businesses outside the EU have to comply with these rules to sell into the EU. People from outside the EU have to comply with the (usually very expensive and time consuming) rules for immigration.

The Brexit proposal was effectively that we could stop complying with the rules we didn't like, without being treated as if we were outside the EU (and all the paperwork that implies). Unsurprisingly this did not go down well.

Two particularly important areas are what happens at Calais: any delay at customs results in the M20 being turned into a lorry park, and any long-term reduction in flow will result in great disruption to UK trade. And what happens across the Irish border: at the moment it runs through houses and farms, and people commute across it. Any checks there will be extremely unpopular and may result in Northern Ireland invoking its right to leave the UK and return to Ireland.

So, in order to leave the EU without chaos, a deal must be made.

However, there is no available deal that has the support of enough MPs in Parliament to actually happen. Hence the current chaos.

what prevents the prime minister from unilaterally disavowing whatever harebrained treaties constitute the bond with continental Europe

"Harebrained" is a stupid condemnation of treaties that have been carefully agreed over decades by hundreds of representatives.

The government's own assessment says that leaving unilaterally will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and food and medicine shortages, since full non-EU customs checks will be imposed at Calais and it will no longer be legal for most UK lorry drivers to drive in the EU or vice versa.

Imagine you are a member of the local tennis club.

You can play tennis for free all the time, but you have to follow the rules of the club.

Now you don't like the rules any more, so you decide to quit.

'Hard Exit' means you quit, but obviously you can't play tennis there anymore. You don't like that.

You are asking to quit, but be allowed to still play tennis there, without following the rules. Obviously, the tennis club doesn't agree to that.

Time goes on, and things are not changing. Either you are bound by the rules, or you can't play there. You still don't like either solution. Tick - tock.

I'll try the simplest answers I can as I tried to explain to my 9 year old:

• Yes. Leaving just means telling the EU we want to leave. To support that, they must believe it was a decision we came to through our normal process of making decisions. Nothing about tariffs or immigration or such - that sort of thing can be worked out separately.




• The decision was actually closer to 3 years ago. The reasons why we seem to have not actually done it are many and debatable. To summarize: Nobody expected the result and it took a lot of time trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. It's possible some bad decisions were made then at that initial stage and nobody had enough sense, or possibly strength of character, to get that straightened out then. So it's dragged out a bit.




• The current PM did not initially want to leave. But she is a politician and politicians will often say things to get votes and public support at one point, and then do something completely different later for the exact same reason. I know that's confusing and it confuses (and angers) us voters as well. But that's the way it is and is rarely otherwise. Any breaking of treaties, unless specified in the treaty itself, usually has to have at least some kind of Parliamentary support. In this particular case, that was made the case by both a vote of Parliament and a Supreme Court verdict.

I know this sounds child-like, but my 9 year old is bright and asks a lot of questions. This is pretty much how I've had to sum things up in a non-biased way (I want her to think for herself on matters like this, not just have my or her mother's views).

I can't do it in two child-proof sentences, but I'll try to come close.

1. The EU is a union of 28 states which has been granted some but not all powers of a central government by the member states.


2. UK voters decided to leave the EU. This is complicated because the EU had so many powers for so long and the UK voters told the UK government to negotiate the details with the remaining EU states.


3. If the UK government and the remaining EU states cannot agree on the details of leaving, the UK will leave without a deal. That means medical drugs approved in the EU are no longer legal to use in the UK and the other way around, UK citizen cannot travel and work in the EU without a visa and the other way around, UK banks cannot sell products in the EU and the other way around. (There are emergency measures to handle some of this. UK and EU citizens won't be deported March 30th even if there is no deal and no extension.)


4. When UK voters decided to leave, they had a simple question with a "yes" or "no" answer. Probably most did not want to leave without a deal.


5. The UK parliament cannot agree on if and how to leave, but they do not want to leave without a deal. The UK parliament has a complicated question with many possible answers, and no answer has a majority for it.

Eleven sentences, not entirely child-proof, and admittedly biased against the current UK parliament and government.

All the countries in the EU agree to 'four freedoms' of the Single European Market:

• free movement of goods


• free movement of capital


• free movement of people


• freedom to establish and provide services

Part of this involves writing EU law into the law of each, individual country (which Brexiteers view as losing national soverignty)

In return, each country can trade tariff free inside the Single Market, and can trade with non-EU countries under the favourable terms of EU trade deals and can benefit from EU subsidies

To answer your questions:

1. Leavng the EU involves invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. After that the UK could just walk away. But it would then have to trade with the EU and other countries under very unfavourable terms. It would cost the UK a huge amount of money and it would take years (the EU/Canada deal took seven years) to negotiate trade deals to replace the EU external deals. The reason Brexit is taking so long is because all but a few extreme leavers want a relationship with the EU that doesn't damage the British economy

Also, Britain will have an open border with the EU between Ireland and Northern Ireland. If there is no deal and the EU imposes the standard tariffs on goods/visa for people, how will that open border be maintained, taxes collected, visas checked etc? Part of the Good Friday Agreement that lead to the IRA and UDF ceasefires is that there is no hard border between the UK and Eire

2. Concrete steps have been taken to leave the EU. There is agreement between Theresa May on all these things but there are many different factions in Parliament that want either a slightly different deal or no deal at all. The EU Withdrawal Bill has moved most EU regulation into British Law so that there are no loopholes for criminals and others to exploit after leaving




3. Theresa May wants to leave the EU under the terms of her deal but she needs this passed into law by Parliament. Most MPs want different deals. Many want to make life easier be retaining some of the four freedoms, and/or joining EFTA and/or staying in the customs union similar to non-EU countries like Norway and Switzerland. Or even not leaving at all

Currently, British law states that we will leave the EU with no deal. This is viewed as an economic catastrophe by most - too many pages to link to here, just google 'no deal economic catastrophe'

Many good answers already, but the Irish border is a particular sticking point that is not much addressed in existing answers. I will try to explain the Irish border issue in simple terms (but "a few sentences" is impossible). First some history.

Partition of Ireland

The UK has a little brother Ireland. For hundreds of years, the UK was in charge of Ireland (and in fact of a large part of the world, because they had conquered those countries with their powerful army, this is why the US speaks English today). About 100 years ago Ireland declared the independent Republic of Ireland (they had wanted independence much longer). But in Northern Ireland, many people (a bit more than half) felt more British than Irish (because their great-grandparents had (been) moved from Britain, partly to suppress Irish independence) and this part did not become independent. Ireland was, and remains, split. This is called the Partition of Ireland.

Belfast agreement / Good Friday agreement

Many Irish people were very unhappy with this, and there was a war. To resolve this war, the UK and the Republic of Ireland agreed to have similar rules. This way, people in all of Ireland could cross between the Republic and Northern Ireland without noticing the border. Both the ones who wanted (nationalists, republicans) and who did not want independence (unionists, loyalists) were OK with that (at least OK enough to mostly stop fighting). They could have very similar rules because they were together in the EU. This agreement is called the Belfast agreement or the Good Friday Agreement.

Backstop

Now the UK will (most likely) leave the EU but the Republic of Ireland will not. This means the rules will not be similar anymore, and the border between the two will become more visible. Many people in Ireland, in particular republicans in Northern Ireland, are very unhappy about that. They might cross the border twice a day or even have a farm that exists on both sides. The EU and the republicans wants that Northern Ireland rules stay close to Republic of Ireland rules (so Northern Ireland stays a little in the EU), but the unionists (and many in the UK government) want that Northern Ireland rules stay close to British rules. It is not possible to do both (unless all of UK stays close to EU rules, which is like staying a bit in the EU). The current UK government needs the support from the unionists, so they have to keep them happy. The backstop is a part of the proposed EU-UK temporary agreement (that Parliament rejected) to keep Northern Ireland close to the EU, in case the EU and the UK do not agree a good long term agreement.

Therefore, for the Irish border question alone, it is impossible for the UK to leave the EU while keeping both nationalists and unionists happy.

In the above, I have simplified many things. The history of Ireland is a bit more complicated. Many unionists also do not want a hard border in Ireland (there are two major unionist parties which are split on this issue). The main opposition in the UK (the Labour Party) proposes a solution that they claim avoids the need for a backstop, but not all are sure this is accurate. Some Irish republicans believe Brexit may be a chance to undo the partition of Ireland and make Ireland one independent country (the idea is that people are so upset with Brexit that they rather join Ireland and EU than stay in a Brexit UK), but that may be wishful thinking.

Overall, Brexit is very complicated and cannot be explained in a few child-proof sentences.

If it wasn't for the Irish border question the negotiations with EU would have been over long ago and the PM's leave deal would have been adopted. As it is there is no way UK can accept the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement which will result in UK being tied to EU for ever just to ensure there is never a hard border. When the No Hard Border decision was made at the end of the Troubles no one said then what about if UK wants to leave the EU? The referendum in 2016 didn't say do you want to leave but btw you won't be able to because the Irish border must remain unmanned. Someone though was aware of this when the WA was being drawn up and they made sure there was an unbreakable clause in there to enforce it, without any regard as to how badly it would affect UK,s ambitions to leave.

To succinctly answer your questions (1), (2), (3) (not necessarily in this order):

• PM May wants out of the EU, but she wants out on the terms of the draft deal she negotiated with the EU... which is lacking support in her own Parliament (but the MPs couldn't decide to replace her as PM either; why that is is an interesting separate issue).




• May and the UK Parliament did trigger (years ago) all the legal steps needed for the UK to crash out the EU with no deal... in the next couple of weeks (a little vague because extensions to the deadline are possible).




• A no-deal exit is however not the Brexit that most UK MPs want, according a recent non-binding vote they took, which is basically the only thing they could agree on recently--that is what kind of Brexit they don't want. So basically their hope-for-the-best thinking (triggering article 50, which has a deadline to finish exit negotiations) is coming back to bite them in the sense that they'll (collectively) get their least favorite version of Brexit... by default.

For more background why no-deal doesn't look good (to most MPs), let me try to explain a few aspects of Brexit. Yes, I'll be oversimplifying by necessity and I'll make [possibly faulty] analogies with the US because the OP hails from there:

Getting out of the EU just by article 50 (which was triggered by PM May two years ago, following a [non-binding] UK referendum) without any deal is like scrapping most of your trade agreements (big understatement). Even if the EU were just a trade agreement, it's often preferable to change one rather than scrap it. Witness Trump's actions in this respect: he scrapped the non-yet-going TPP, but for most other, NAFTA, etc., he renegotiated them with some but not huge changes.

The trouble is that there's no consensus in the UK parliament what a replacement deal should look like, even though PM May did hammer a draft deal with the EU. Compare with NAFTA's replacement having trouble in Congress. Trump gave up threatening to just scrap NAFTA. Back to EU, the looming problem is that Article 50's legal two-year deadline to reach a deal means there's an automatic scrap about to happen. A short extension to the Article 50 default-no-deal-deadline has been mutually agreed with the EU, but the EU also got tired of the indecision in the UK parliament as well.

But the EU is not just a trade deal; in a certain way it, is was also a part of a peace agreement in Northern Ireland. The de-escalation in Northern Ireland (Good Friday Agreement) was largely possible because both the UK and Ireland were part of the EU's single market, so the two countries could make invisible the border that the Northern Irish republicans fought against (the latter because they advocated a union of Northern Ireland with Ireland). So dropping out of the EU is also like scrapping a part of peace deal. Imagine a US state [legally] seceding from the rest of the Union, while a part of secessionist state's population threatens with civil unrest or even domestic terrorism if a border is actually put in place after the secession...

So the draft deal May agreed to "gave in" to the troublesome guys [Northern Ireland republicans] by allowing Northern Ireland to stay in a customs' union (so no visible border) with the EU until someone can figure out a better solution (so it's a open-ended concession/delay); this is the [in]famous "backstop". But this backstop pissed off the "take back control of our borders" guys from her own party coalition (including a Northern Ireland unionist party--unionist here meaning they want [to stay in] union with the UK--that is actually critical to keeping May's government in power and also to the ratification of a deal). I'm vastly oversimplifying the terms of the draft deal, but you can search here for more questions on the backstop and the intricate details of the customs union it entails; a part of the rules would extend to the whole of UK, another sticking point for some MPs ("take back control of our laws"). The very fact that different rules would apply to Northern Ireland and rest of UK is a red line for the Northern Ireland unionist parties.

Here are my two cents:

1. To leave the EU, which is essentially a complex trade bloc, the UK had to trigger a part of the EU treaty called Article 50. By triggering this article, the UK could leave the EU immediatly, hence no longer being subject to various regulations (but also excluded from the free trade zone), or take time up to 2 years to negotiate an exit deal.




2. The Brexit referendum was on June 23, 2016. 7 months after the Brexit result (on March 29, 2017), the UK finally triggered article 50, starting the 2 year countdown. In that time Theresa May's government has supposedly been negotiating an exit deal while various agencies and civilian businesses prepared themselves for the exit.



3. 
   

   Theresa May finally brought her deal to the Parliament for a vote in January 2019. As it turns out, it was an absolutely horrible deal and the Parliament rejected it by the largest margin EVER for a sitting government's proposal. The main points of concern were:

   
   
   
   
   
   • The border with Ireland and Northern Ireland. Ireland is independent and part of the EU, but a hard border would have to be avoided to prevent civil unrest (i.e the Troubles). May's deal would have essentially removed Northen Ireland from the UK.
   
   
   • Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a UK protectorate and has been for hundreds of years. However, due to its proximity to Spain it is very connected to Spain culturally. May's deal would have essentially given control of Gibraltar to Spain.
   
   
   • EU membership fees. The UK owes fees to the EU totalling £39Billion for 2019. May's deal would have essentially given up all that money (which is HUGE leverage for the UK) with nothing in return in terms of trade concessions.
   
   
   
   

So now, almost 3 years after the referendum the UK government is still "figuring thinga out". In my mind that is an utter failure.