Image courtesy of Bloomberg
Europe woke up to a shock this morning as the vote count was completed in Britain and the result — driven primarily by those in the smaller cities and villages across England and Wales — was that Britain will be filing for a divorce from the EU family.
From Huffington Post UK:
The UK’s vote for Brexit in the EU Referendum means we are no longer the fifth biggest economy in the world, according to reports, as the result wiped £122 billion off the value of the FTSE 100 within minutes.
It will take months — if not years — of paperwork and negotiation for the divorce to be finalized, and it’s too early to say what an EU-less Britain, and a Britain-less EU, might look like. However, the simple fact that the ‘Leave’ side was led by a hodge-podge of right-wing nationalists and fascist neo-nazis (yes UKIP, I’m talking to you and your people), it’s not a promising road to embark upon.
Meanwhile, the results were only announced (a couple of hours ago) and already one of the leaders of the ‘Leave’ vote was backtracking on one of the core promises made during the campaign — to funnel the money that was going to the EU instead into the health service.
Predictably, after 17 million people vote #Leave, Nigel Farage basically admits the #Brexit campaign was a sham. https://t.co/5HYnSkWOdS
— D (@Delo_Taylor) June 24, 2016
As that the ‘Leave’-ers leaders were basically Britain’s version of the Trump-types, this comes as no surprise. The result itself however is quite a surprise — 72.2% voter turnout, and 51.9% voted to leave. The only areas that voted to remain were London and it’s surroundings, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
As it stands it’s too early to say what sort of effect this will have in the mid- to long- term. I’ll leave such pontificating to the Richard Branson’s of the world.
What I can report from this side of the Atlantic is the sense of shock. Living in Dublin and working in a large multi-national with people from all over EMEA, all I’ve heard all morning is ‘no way...’. Nobody thought they’d actually do it, it seems like such a stupid idea it’s almost unfathomable. Then again at the very least 12 million people support Trump, so maybe it’s time for us to reevaluate what we fathom.
More to come soon.
___
Edit 11:05am GMT: Updated the poll numbers (voter turnout was incorrect)
Read More
